A depository, or custodian, holds the securities and cash belonging to a scheme. Twenty-one banks hold the licence.

It is the reason a fund manager failing is not the same as your money disappearing: the manager decides what the scheme buys, but a different, licensed institution is holding it, and it answers to the trustee rather than to the manager.

You never choose one and never pay one directly — the scheme appoints it. But the name is public and worth knowing, because "who is actually holding the money" has a real answer and a legitimate fund will give it to you without hesitating.

None. A custodian is a safeguard, and its fee is paid by the scheme out of the fund's assets before any return reaches you.

Which is the honest way to read every cost in this group: the trustee and the custodian are both charged to the fund, so the rate you are quoted is already net of them. They are not an extra deduction to worry about — they are the reason the arrangement is worth using.