B2C2‘s Asia family office push has taken a concrete step forward with the appointment of Jason Lai as Senior Advisor, based in Singapore. Lai joins from Schroders Wealth Management Asia, where he served most recently as Chairman, and his brief is to deepen the firm’s relationships with funds, asset managers and family offices across the Asia-Pacific region.
B2C2 is a digital asset liquidity provider (a firm that quotes buy and sell prices in crypto markets, letting institutional clients trade without hunting for a counterparty). It does not serve retail clients and operates strictly on a business-to-business basis.
From Thirdrock to Schroders to B2C2
Lai’s standing in Asian wealth circles goes back to 2009, when he founded Thirdrock Group, an independent wealth management firm. Schroders, the FTSE 100 asset manager, acquired Thirdrock in 2019. Lai then led Schroders’ Asian Wealth Management unit as CEO before stepping up to Chairman, a position he held until his departure earlier in 2026.
That combination of founder credentials and institutional weight is precisely what B2C2 is buying. Family offices (private investment structures run on behalf of wealthy families) represent some of the largest pools of unattached capital in Asia, and they are increasingly allocating to digital assets.
Goldman Sachs has found that around a third of family offices worldwide already hold crypto in their portfolios. Blockchain-based transaction volumes in Asia grew 69% year on year through June 2025, the fastest rate of any region, according to OECD data cited in B2C2’s announcement. Boston Consulting Group projects that assets under management across the Asia-Pacific region will reach $99 trillion by 2029, with Singapore and Hong Kong anchoring the growth.
‘Asia’s wealthiest families and managers are increasingly investing in digital assets,’ Lai said. ‘B2C2 has the liquidity and execution infrastructure this client base needs. I’m looking forward to helping the firm build the trusted bridge between institutional wealth and digital markets in this region.’
Why B2C2’s Asia Family Office Ambitions Make Sense Now
The appointment builds on a sequence of moves B2C2 has made in Asia-Pacific in recent years. The firm opened a Singapore office in 2024 and applied for a Major Payment Institution licence in the city-state, with regional CEO Rogers (a 24-year industry veteran who previously worked at State Street, Goldman Sachs and UBS) leading operations there. Laura Teo was subsequently brought in as Singapore Country Head to drive commercial strategy across the region, following roles at Standard Chartered, Barclays and Morgan Stanley.
B2C2 has been owned by Japanese financial group SBI Holdings since 2020. The scale of the business gives context to this expansion: B2C2 generated JPY 57.14 billion in revenue in the fiscal year ended March 2024, an 88.5% increase from the prior year, with a pre-tax profit of JPY 8.4 billion. SBI attributed the growth to the firm’s customer base expansion strategy.
A Bigger Bet on Institutional Infrastructure
Lai’s appointment runs alongside a separate but complementary push into institutional trading infrastructure. On 23 April 2026, B2C2 announced it had become a liquidity provider on TP ICAP’s Fusion Digital Assets venue, operating under a matched principal model (meaning B2C2 acts as counterparty on both sides of a trade simultaneously, keeping its net exposure flat).
TP ICAP’s matched principal framework already underpins significant activity across global markets: the group supported over $200 trillion in notional volumes in 2025, according to the B2C2 and TP ICAP partnership announcement. B2C2 Group CEO Thomas Restout described the tie-up as ‘a significant step in the evolution of institutional digital asset markets,’ noting both firms as London-headquartered leaders in their respective fields.
Standard Chartered acts as the digital asset custodian and settlement agent for the Fusion venue, according to TP ICAP’s digital assets page. Digital asset capital markets firm GSR also joined Fusion as a liquidity partner in July 2026, among the first firms to execute trades under the matched principal model, suggesting the venue is gaining traction beyond a single bilateral arrangement.
For investors watching the institutional crypto space, the pattern is clear: B2C2 is simultaneously widening its distribution reach through wealth-market hires and deepening its execution infrastructure through broker partnerships. Whether Asian family office flows materialise at scale will depend partly on regulatory progress in Singapore, where the Major Payment Institution licence application remains a gating factor for certain client types.
