Custody of customer assets
Custody of customer assets in the Energy, Power & Commodities sector sits at an underregulated intersection that is drawing direct attention from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the European Securities and Markets Authority. The CFTC's Part 22 segregation rules and ESMA's EMIR margin collateral standards both impose custodial obligations on commodity derivatives participants, but compliance teams are now grappling with how those frameworks apply when the underlying asset is a physical commodity, a carbon credit, or a tokenized energy instrument. That gap is where enforcement risk is accumulating.
Watch
- CFTC Part 22 segregation requirements applied to physical commodity-linked derivatives
- ESMA guidance on collateral custody under EMIR for energy market participants
- FERC jurisdictional questions on third-party custody of ISO/RTO margin accounts
- Carbon credit custody: no settled federal custodian standard exists yet in the U.S.
- State-level money transmission licenses being applied to commodity asset custodians
Recent material activity in Energy, Power & Commodities
Active monitoring in place across Energy, Power & Commodities. Material developments related to custody of customer assets will appear here as they are published.