The Biggest Onboarding Barriers for Institutions Entering Digital Assets

Institutions face tricky obstacles when looking to invest in digital assets. Some can be extremely limiting, and others are simply due to a team's lack of knowledge or expertise. Here are three of the main barriers that institutions might see in today’s market and some ideas on how these can be overcome. 

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Regulation and compliance 

It would be an understatement to say that the current regulatory landscape in digital assets is complicated. Complicated to understand, navigate, and predict. Regulation across the world is fragmented, even sometimes within a single economic region. It’s no wonder that so many reports on the state of crypto in 2025 reveal that financial institutions are ready to move into digital assets, but their biggest concern is regulatory fragmentation and uncertainty. Being compliant is essential to the onboarding of crypto and digital assets into their existing infrastructure, so this concern is highly limiting. 

While yes, regulation is a complicated issue that requires a lot of attention, the same can be said for TradFi rules that banks have existed under for decades. Traditional finance already has stringent requirements, and so financial institutions such as banks already have large teams and resources to ensure compliance and regulatory oversight. This will have to be amended and perhaps expanded to a certain level, with the adoption of digital assets. It does not, however, necessarily mean a large-scale investment in totally new structures. The main issue remains uncertainty and change, but with a robust groundwork laid, institutions can be ready to face any regulatory challenges after onboarding is complete. 

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Technical integration 

Legacy infrastructures and systems expose gaps when new technologies need to be incorporated. Integrating digital asset solutions may not be possible with outdated legacy systems and comes at a significant cost to upgrade. Interoperability is vital to the smooth onboarding and utilization of digital assets; something which becomes harder the older the existing infrastructure. 

Connectivity and integration are significant challenges, but these offer an opportunity to the wider fintech industry. There is a technological solution out there to these challenges. The B2B SaaS ecosystem will allow institutions to invest in a wide array of tools that can be purchased on a bespoke, tailored basis to solve these issues. 

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Usability and user experience

Complex technology and steep learning curves are a very real educational barrier to the integration of digital assets. This goes for the institutions themselves, as well as their end-users. When an institution faces a difficult onboarding process, it can deter any adoption at all. And end-users will simply not use products that they don’t understand or have not been educated on. We face a situation where institutions struggle to onboard digital assets, at financial and resource expense, only to offer products that their end-users do not understand, want, or find helpful. With the added difficulty of stringent regulatory practices, it can be difficult to educate users on why they need to fight through the initial onboarding practicalities to benefit. Institutions need to put in the work to create smooth onboarding and educational resources, both internally and externally, to avoid an offering that is rushed, unusable, and unpopular. 

Barriers, not walls

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While these three areas stand out as the biggest onboarding barriers for institutions entering digital assets, these barriers are not impenetrable, nor unbreakable. 

Yes, regulations and compliance are difficult to navigate, but not impossible, and ultimately a bonus for the growing ecosystem. 

Yes, technical integration can be a headache, but every day, innovative solutions, plus bespoke and/or off-the-shelf products, are being created every day to fill every business need. 

Yes, usability and education will require a deeper understanding and guidance for users, but with the digital asset industry growing exponentially, this is a crucial time to harness user and media interest to fill those educational gaps. 

At Fideum, we see and understand these barriers for institutions, but also how to solve them. Contact the team at Fideum to learn more about how we can help you navigate these hurdles.

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