(Bloomberg) -- Standard Chartered-owned crypto custodian Zodia Custody Ltd. has secured registration as a virtual asset service provider in Luxembourg, expanding its reach into Europe.

The London-headquartered firm will announce the registration of its Irish subsidiary with the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier, or CSSF, in Luxembourg on Friday, Zodia Custody Ireland chief executive officer John Cronin said in an interview with Bloomberg News.

The move will allow Zodia to acquire more clients in fund management due to Luxembourg’s reputation as a preferred hub for such activities, Cronin said. It will also enable the firm to grow its business further in the European Union, ahead of new crypto rules that will include provisions making it easier for companies to export their registrations across the bloc.

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Zodia is also in talks to get approvals from regulators in France and Spain, Cronin said. The company is targeting licenses “opportunistically where we’d have clients,” he added.

The registration process in Luxembourg took around eight months for Zodia — far quicker than in the UK and Ireland, where lengthy approval times and stretched regulatory capacity saw some companies wait two years or more for permissions under anti-money laundering standards.

Zodia Custody is a wholly owned subsidiary of Standard Chartered, one of the UK’s largest banks, and Northern Trust holds a 10% stake in the business. It was established in late 2020, on the cusp of the last crypto bull market. Since then the fortunes of the digital asset sector have soured amid a string of company collapses, falling valuations and scandals.

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