A custodian bank, or simply custodian, is a specialized financial institution responsible for safeguarding a firm's or individual's financial assets and is not engaged in "traditional" commercial or consumer/retail banking such as mortgage or personal lending, branch banking, personal accounts, automated teller machines (ATMs) and so forth. The role of a custodian in such a case would be to:
arrange settlement of any purchases and sales and deliveries in/out of such securities and currency
collect information on and income from such assets (dividends in the case of stocks/equities and coupons (interest payments) in the case of bonds) and administer related tax withholding documents and foreign tax reclamation
often perform additional services for particular clients such as mutual funds; examples include fund accounting, administration, legal, compliance and tax support services