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BNY, State Street, JP Morgan and Citi each posted record revenue totals in 2024, adding over $ 2 billion of new combined revenue for the four largest custodians. State Street achieved over $ 10 billion in revenue for the first time since 2021 – up 7 % year-on-year, while BNY’ s annual total grew 3.3 % to reach $ 8.9 billion. Of the four custodians, Citi posted the largest increase in securities services revenue – jumping 16.6 % from the previous year to surpass $ 5 billion for the first time, for a total of $ 5.1 billion. Looking at the revenue growth since 2021, Citi has increased its total by 51.9 % – more than double the rate of growth of any of the other three custodians. This impressive run of growth means that Citi has now leapfrogged closest rival JP Morgan for the first time in terms of annual revenue totals. JP Morgan did also surpass the $ 5 billion revenue mark for the first time in its history, sitting just $ 33 million behind Citi on $ 5.08 billion. Concerning assets under custody / administration( AUC / A), despite a growth blip in the fourth quarter, increases on a year-on-year basis were healthy, with almost $ 15 trillion in assets added collectively since year-end 2023. State Street saw the largest AUC / A growth on an annual basis – up 11.3 %. While market conditions have certainly been favourable for the banks over the last couple of years, executives from the leading custodians have been quick to point to behind-the-scenes upgrades as a key driver of revenue growth.“ Our investments in digitisation and AI over the last couple of years have laid a solid foundation for us to become more efficient and to drive top-line growth over time,” said Robin Vince, CEO of BNY, during the firm’ s Q4 earnings call last week, after outlining plans to migrate 80 % of staff to a new operating model this year. Meanwhile, speaking on State Street’ s Q4 earnings call, Mark Keating, chief financial officer for investment services, attributed 250 % growth in servicing fee sales since 2020 to under-the-hood upgrades and a restructuring of the business.
‘ Big four’ custodians post record revenues in 2024 as infrastructure upgrades bear fruit
Citi leapfrogs JP Morgan’ s annual revenue total for the first time, while State Street posts largest AUC / A year-on-year growth.
“ About a year-and-a-half ago, we laid out a plan on how we’ re going to power sustainable growth in our servicing fee business,” he explained.“ At that point, we knew we needed to perform better in our core custody and servicing business.” To drive those improvements, CEO Ron O’ Hanley pointed to three key changes the business made:“ One was an intense focus on improving service quality, which had a lot to do with the technology investments that we were starting to make back then, and now, have come to fruition.“ Second was enhancing capabilities in areas such as core custody, private markets, as well as Alpha broadly – and we’ ve talked about Alpha being a back-office and servicing fee gathering machine. And then thirdly, it was just in raw sales capabilities. There’ s been a significant build-up of those capabilities, change out of some people. So that stuff is all in place and, therefore, gives us a lot of confidence as we look forward.”
Chris Lemmon, News and Special
Projects Editor
82 Global Custodian Spring 2025