Central banks in higher-income economies work with more banks on custody of parts of their reserve assets than their peers in low- and lower middle-income economies.

Overall, high-income economies, as classified by the World Bank, work on average with 5.6 custodian banks. This number progressively falls with the country’s level of income, according to Reserve Benchmarks 2020 data.

For upper middle-income central banks, the average is 4.5 custodians; whereas in lower middle-income