For Sebastian Higgs, COO and co-founder of Cordial Systems, the digital asset journey began well before the current wave of institutional adoption began to normalise it for the capital market masses.
Entering the sector in 2017 with a focus on custody and cryptographic security – including building out platforms that earned early FCA authorisation before an acquisition by Genesis Global Trading – Higgs has spent nearly a decade navigating the architectural evolution of digital finance.
Today, through Cordial Systems, Higgs and his team are tackling the plumbing of the new financial architecture: acting as an orchestration layer that bridges traditional core banking systems, legacy infrastructure and distributed ledger rails.
“The core products are designed for institutions that need to own and control the critical parts of their digital asset operations,” Higgs explains. “Whether that’s a small crypto trading firm managing inventory across dozens of venues or a global institution tokenising assets, the challenge is coordinating between the blockchain layer, core banking systems, and third-party tooling that isn’t native to crypto.”
Moving beyond the proof-of-concept era
The narrative surrounding tokenisation and distributed ledger technology has undergone a profound shift over the past 24 months. What was once characterised by exploratory pilots and isolated proof-of-concepts has given way to strategic, board-level commitments from the world’s largest financial institutions.
Higgs points to structural tailwinds—from shifting political and regulatory postures in major jurisdictions to high-profile initiatives by tier-one custodians and market infrastructure providers—as evidence that the industry has crossed a critical threshold.
“If the biggest custodian in the world is announcing digital transfer agent capabilities, I think that is a pretty big thing,” Higgs notes. “This isn’t like the institutions coming five years ago, which felt a little like they were just flirting with us. Now, they’re actually doing something. They know what they’re trying to deliver, and they need help with the execution.”
For legacy institutions, however, navigating this transition requires balancing specialised technological demands with strict operational risk frameworks. Traditional finance players are rarely building infrastructure from scratch; instead, they require trusted partners who can help them translate decades of capital markets experience onto modern rails without compromising compliance or operational resilience.
The era of collaboration and value-add services
One of the defining characteristics of the current market cycle is the sheer volume of partnerships and consortiums forming across the financial ecosystem. Rather than an era of winner-take-all disruption, today’s landscape is defined by collaboration between incumbent giants and agile technology providers.
According to Higgs, traditional institutions are pragmatic about their timelines and strategic roadmaps. “They want to go into it as a fast route to market,” he says. “Maybe it’s not the ultimate end-state architecture, but it’s what works for them today. As long as there is still a path to change that over time, where they take more control or build out more capabilities in-house, that’s the carrot.”
Yet, Higgs cautions that simply lifting and shifting existing instruments onto a blockchain – such as issuing a digital bond or tokenised share class – is merely the starting point. The true economic value of tokenisation lies in what comes next.
“Issuing and getting securities on chain is only the baseline,” Higgs says. “The end goal is when you start to have enough of this inventory on chain that you can move things around in seconds. If we can save a few basis points on funding and optimise collateral management, that’s a massive margin expansion for banks in dollar terms. Collapsing cross-border friction, real-time settlement and reducing reconciliation errors? That’s where things get interesting.”
Looking ahead: The road to the Capital Pioneer Summit
As institutional capital continues to mature on chain, the dialogue has shifted away from ideological debates toward practical, scalable execution. For Higgs, the focus remains on delivering infrastructure that is robust, adaptable and directly aligned with the rational models of traditional market practitioners.
Sebastian Higgs will be discussing the practical realities of institutional adoption, post-trade transformation and custody architecture at the upcoming Capital Pioneer Digital Assets Summit in London.
