COVER STORY • AON PARTNERSHIP
As regulations mature, institutions are transferring ownership of digital assets from product teams to group risk, compliance and board-level governance. The end of crypto experiments
“The tone from policymakers has become more welcoming, and that has given institutions more confidence in the longevity of any investment they make in the space,” says Poland. Developments in the US – along with the EU’s MiCA rules − have compelled large institutions to consider digital assets across the whole organisation, rather than just in single product verticals or innovation teams. Sullivan reinforces this view, arguing that regulatory clarity has been the most important factor in changing institutional perception. He highlights how the UK's prospective regime can also “bring UK crypto trading platforms, brokers and custodians into the regulatory perimeter and apply familiar rules for capital”. “MiCA has been difficult for businesses to digest and implement and has been subject to lots of challenges from the industry. In addition, it has been applied inconsistently in different jurisdictions,” Poland adds. However, MiCA has created a new framework that can help institutions launch new products more confidently. "Whilst MiCA is far from the gold standard, it has at least drawn a clear regulatory perimeter, which means institutions can start to offer products knowing where the line is,” Poland adds. This regulatory legibility hasn't just changed policy debates but how institutions engage internally.
UNTIL RECENTLY, digital assets were constrained to the fringes of the financial services sector. They were neither dismissed nor embraced but rarely entered into conversations beyond product teams or innovation
Officer at BCB Group, have key insights on this trend. Sullivan notes that institutions are responding to the alignment of digital assets with familiar legal and regulatory structures, which help justify engagement at the board and Chief Risk Officer (CRO) level. Ahead of the joint Aon–BCB Group BLINC Live! event in London in February 2026, both firms are keen to highlight a seismic shift in how large institutions now view digital assets. The event will bring together institutions, insurers and regulators to explore how optimising governance, safeguarding and risk transfer will shape the next phase of digital asset adoption. US SPARKS AN INFLECTION POINT Poland says the changing narrative in the US − where the GENIUS Act stablecoin regulation was signed into law in July 2025 − has sparked an inflection point. That shift may have less to do with the legislative detail than with what clarity enables institutions to do. In the boardrooms of financial institutions, regulatory clarity helps to ease speculation about what any new regulation might look like. This is why there are still some concerns about the UK's regime, for instance, with a full regulatory framework not having been confirmed.
labs. For many large financial institutions, engagement was relatively cautious, siloed and intentionally restricted.
The situation is very different today. It isn't just the sentiment around digital assets that has changed − it is also the ownership. In terms of institutional priorities, digital assets have moved on from simple product experiments to enterprise-level governance, dominating board-level discussions about operational resilience, compliance, safeguarding and counterparty risk. INSTITUTIONS NO LONGER ‘EXPERIMENTING’ BCB Group and Aon work closely with financial institutions and regulators and have observed this trend first-hand. In the last few years, global banks, asset managers and insurers have begun to integrate digital assets into their core operations, not necessarily because of a surge in enthusiasm but out of necessity. Rupert Poland, Head of Digital Assets EMEA at Aon, and James Sullivan, Chief Risk and Compliance
THE TRANSFER OF OWNERSHIP
Rupert Poland Head of Digital Assets EMEA Aon
Aon has significant relationships with many of the world’s largest financial institutions and has been having conversations about digital asset risk for years – but often at the product team level. Increasingly, its Group Risk functions and CRO teams are treating digital assets as top-tier risk priorities, often at the same level as artificial intelligence. When Group Risk teams and CROs took ownership, digital assets were elevated from a pilot project to a governance process.
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