Leading asset managers are actively exploring and implementing tokenization and digital assets to enhance product offerings, create new utilities, and ultimately deliver hyper-personalized financial solutions to a broader range of investors.
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So welcome everyone to today's panel on
bringing trillions on chain uh from an
asset manager perspective. For this
discussion we have leaders of four of
the largest global asset managers uh
Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Wisdom
Street and and State Street. Um
cumulatively just to give a sense of
order of magnitude these asset managers
represent over 12 trillion in assets
under management. Uh and maybe before we
start, I'll ask each of you quickly in
30 to 60 seconds briefly introduce
yourselves and what your firms are doing
in digital assets.
>> Okay. Um good morning everybody. Uh my
name is Cynthia Loboet and I am in
charge of the digital asset management
division um at Fidelity. Um as Matio
said, uh Fidelity is one of the largest
asset managers uh in the world. And it
only made a tremendous amount of sense
that we stood up a unit uh within asset
management uh to focus on um this new
ecosystem of digital assets both native
assets uh for which we are bringing uh
exposures to uh customers across our
retail and our institutional platform
through traditional vehicles. And now
what we're really excited about um
through tokenization and onchain vault
structures is the ability to bring um
new exposures to onchain investors. um
compro composed of digital assets both
tokenized and um uh natively digital
assets and all of this is driven by our
research uh driven culture of uh comp um
composing financial solutions for our customers.
customers.
>> Great. Hi, I'm Sandy Call. I head up
innovation at Franklin Templeton. Um and
and innovation is broad because this
digital asset universe is now expanding
into every part of our business. Right?
So we are thinking about the interface
of where digital assets touches our
investment management, where it touches
our product development, where it
touches our marketing, uh the way that
we engage with new audiences and new
distribution venues and and so we are
looking at this holistically um and
thinking about how it plays into some
existing industry trends around personalization
personalization
uh and customization of portfolios and
obviously wallets offer tremendous
potential in that regard. Uh so all of
those different functions report up to
us. Our digital asset unit is part of
our innovation team. Um and like
Cynthia, we are exploring a whole
variety of new offerings and excited to
be here.
>> Uh thank you everyone. Uh I'm Will Pek.
I'm head of digital assets at Wisdom
Tree. Wisdom Tree uh is a $160 billion
asset manager. So that's our part of the
12 trillion. Uh we are one of the kind
of original ETF pioneers. I see some
people in the audience who helped kind
of make that happen at Wisdomree in the
ETF industry more broadly. Uh we saw
tokenization kind of similarly to how uh
we saw ETFs 20 years ago uh compared to
mutual funds being the next evolution in
the rapper, the next evolution in asset
management as a technology. So uh for us
we've got a focus around tokenized
registered funds here in the United
States including our money market fund.
We make those available to US retail
through an app we have called Wisdomree
Prime, also to global businesses through
a platform called Wisdom Tree Connect.
And um I don't know, just very excited
and bullish on the space.
>> Thank you. I'm Kim Hawkfeld. I run our
digital asset initiative at State Street
Investment Management. Um, I'm going to
repeat a lot of the comments that
everybody here on the panel's already
said, but perhaps um, my own personal
journey into digital kind of sums up
state street's journey, which is I was
hired to run our cash business at state
investment management. We have half a
trillion dollars worth of cash assets
out of a five five plus trillion dollar
total. And I we really saw what
tokenized money funds could do for our
cash franchise. And that's really been
the journey, my personal journey as well
as State Street's journey into digital
assets, which has obviously then
expanded into tokenization as a rapper.
The whole theme of innovation, I'm going
to have to correct you, Will, and say we
invented that ETF rapper back in 1993
was fun.
>> Correction [laughter]
>> and um you know, it's part of of our DNA
in terms of innovating and thinking
about product rapids.
>> Excellent. We'll come back to the ETF
analogy a bit later. Um but maybe before
we kick off 2025 was a big year for
tokenization digital assets. I think
each of your funds firms have either
significantly scaled your tokenized
money market funds or announced launches
of products. If we take a bit of that
step back and think through a bit of
lessons learned we've gone from about
three billion in tokenized market funds
I think a year ago when we were at the
at the summit about 10 billion today.
What are some lessons learned from an
institutional standpoint, asset manager
standpoint to think through the next
wave of tokenized assets?
>> I'd start with um the the objective of
bringing assets on chain and I think we
heard a little bit that of this from the
team um earlier this morning is not just
um uh to tokenize an asset for the sake
of tokenizing it. um you know the idea
of bringing an asset and representing it
on chain um with a token is the easiest
part of the entire process. Um the the
hardest part um is really building the
ecosystem for a utility for the asset.
And um you know when we have talked to
um in our investors uh and and even when
we talk to you know our product teams um
you know when we talk about tokenization
uh we have to compare it with what is
the opportunity set that investors today
have in going to our brokerage platform
and being able to buy um every fund that
is available in the entire United States
every stock and every bond. um you get
access um through the brokerage account.
What you don't get is the utility of the
247 access, the um global access. Um the
ability to now deposit collateral and be
able to manage your balance sheet um on
a 247 basis because by the way, markets
are global. Um markets do not close at 4
p.m. Monday through Friday, the way that
our stock markets um and bond markets
close sooner than 4 p.m. uh Monday
through Friday. So, um I think that's
really what is exciting is unlocking
these new utilities and bringing the
infrastructure to be able to bring
investors these new opportunities.
>> Yeah, I I completely agree with
everything Cynthia said. I think they're
doing great work in exploring this space
and like Franklin Templeton um you know,
we realize that there's no one model
yet, right? That there are multiple ways
in which you have to think about
approaching this space and creating
product. So you need to be open to
thinking about taking today's products
and figuring out how to make them
available online that look very similar
to today's products. You need to think
about new access vehicles that allow
exposure to today's products but allow
it in a way that is permissionless so
that you can get those assets being used
as collateral in new models in DeFi and
in new lending models uh collateral
models and then you need to also think
about what does the next generation of
products look like right where do we
move furthest away from where the
existing paradigm sits in terms of how
you build an investment fund how you
implement an investment mandate, how you
manage the securities or the uh assets
coming in and out of the fund, right?
There's new evolution happening in each
aspect of what it actually means to
trade a fund based on these technologies
and you need to be experimenting with
all three pathways simultaneously
because we don't know what's going to
really get traction in the long run. So
it's kind of an exciting space because
you really are being challenged to
constantly be thinking about not only
how have we done this traditionally and
can it be a new rapper but how do we do
this in all new ways that really
leverage this technology to create a
better financial system.
>> Uh yeah on my end I guess what I'd say
is that unlike you know when we sat up
here maybe a year ago there's um been
much more kind of actual organic client
like demand happening in the space over
the past year. think you can point to
the Genius Act for a lot of that. I
mean, stable coins have grown from 200
billion a year ago to 300 billion in
supply today. You know, maybe you'd like
them to keep increasing faster and uh
we'll see what kind of drives that next
wave of growth as more and more
businesses are actually implementing
things post the Genius Act passing. So,
um from my perspective, it's like you've
got clients and they're kind of, you
know, the balance between them telling
you what they want and also you kind of
forecasting based on what you understand
about your clients what they're going to
want in the future. So, I I do think
that kind of client-driven demand is um
happening much more now than it was a
year ago. And we always try to listen to
our clients and hear what's important to
them and build products for um that
helps them in their business.
>> I'm going to pick up on this comment on
client demand because we're not yet
seeing a a rush to the door, shall we
say, a huge amount of curiosity and
interest. And I if I could sum up our
journey in this space and what we've
learned is the value of education um as
Cynthia says you know the tech now is I
don't want to say standard but the tech
is the easy bit it's understanding how
it plugs into the broader infrastructure
and it's hugely complex you know Sandy
as you said we have to try different
things and figure out what works and I
think this journey for us has very much
been around education both internally
both and to our clients and also to our
regulators so so much of this is we've
got to experiment we've got to try and
see what works. We'll see what sticks.
We can see where the value is, but
perhaps our clients can't see that or
perhaps our regulators can't see that or
our legal and compliance colleagues
can't see that. So, it's very much been
a journey of discovery for us. Hugely
exciting. I suspect there going to be
lots of twists and turns in the road,
but I think keeping an eye on the the
clear end goal, which is replplumbing
our infrastructure and then seeing what
this new architecture can do in terms of
flow and new assets um is hugely exciting.
exciting.
>> So there's seems a bit of utility,
adaptability, I think experimentation
and I want to spend a bit more time on
on client demand. I think that we had an
initial dialogue there and it still
happens in in many forms where I go I
get the question which is usually quite
a leading question. I don't have demand.
I don't clients tapping at my door and
asking for a tokenized product which is
usually a polite way of saying why are
we tokenizing like why should I care? Um
when we think of ETF which I think a
very interesting analogy would love to
hear from you but I doubt you had
clients coming knocking at the door and
saying oh can we create this product yet
we know the demand that has happened
since. So how do you think about
innovation and balancing that with
client demand? Where and when do you
start seeing client demand? I think will
you touched on early signs so maybe we
can start with you um of where there is
existing demand.
>> Yeah. So on the ETF point so I wasn't
there for the development of ETFs 20
years ago but um you know people that I
work with certainly my boss was and um
no one at the time was like saying like
oh I want like I want an ETF right like
it wasn't like they were knocking on the
door saying my mutual fund's not really
working that well for me like can you
give me an ETF? Frankly, the spider just
sat there for a long time after State
Street acquired it from the American
Stock Exchange and didn't really do
much, right? And it just kind of took,
you know, maybe a decade before more and
more people launched new products.
People kind of figured out, wow, there's
actually really something to like the
internet liquidity. Also, the
standardization, a lot of people talk
about the tax point, but I think the
standardization point might be the
biggest with ETFs, saying, hey, all I
need is a brokerage account and with no
new paperwork, I can access any liquid
asset class anywhere in the world.
That's like a very powerful concept that
I think people take for granted today
that was just not necessarily true when
the days when you had to kind of have
direct mutual fund wholesaler
relationships and things like that on
different platforms. So um we we do see
that kind of potential like you see a
similar trend here and um you know in
terms of client demand that we're seeing
I mean one is like stable coin issuers
themselves right you're seeing a lot
more kind of growth of new stable coin
issuers in the space white label firms
and others not just circle and tether
who are looking for reserve assets for
stable coins in kind of different
formats so that's certainly one
extending on that you're seeing a lot
more stablecoin native businesses so
people who are doing treasury operations
and stable coins who are looking for
yield bearing or other diversifying
assets above and beyond what they can
get with stable coins which can't pay
yield then they maybe pay yield through
rewards and it's kind of unclear and
like why not just buy a tokenized money
market fund right so that's a second
example that we're seeing and then also
there's a lot of people who are in DeFi
who are looking for remain on chain be
able to use their existing
infrastructure participate in DeFi who
are looking for other yieldbearing and
diversifying assets so that's the types
of clients that we're seeing. It's not
somebody who's sitting in their Fidelity
or Erade brokerage account saying,
"Well, I've got a S&P 500 ETF. Why don't
I buy an S&P 500 token?" Like, that's
just not the customer journey that's
going to happen in this space. The ETF
works extremely extremely well for
somebody who's well served by a
brokerage account. Um, I don't think
they care too much about trading at 2 in
the morning. Um, so, um, I think it's
really about serving different use cases
and different customers that you're
otherwise not able to access. So I know
I just give a really long answer but
those kind of Kim do you want to bounce
back? I'm I'm going to come back to the
cash use case because I think that's
where the the use case for us is so
clear and I always like to relate the
the story of the money budget crisis in
the UK in September 2022 where saw a
huge dash for cash after an unfunded
budget was announced and what you saw
was a huge um pressure a systemic
pressure where the price price of guilts
was falling through the floor and all of
the LDI managers in the UK suddenly had
to liquidate a ton of cash to post as
collateral. Most of that cash was
sitting in sterling denominated money
funds. What then happened? The money
fund managers had to liquidate the
guilts in their portfolio, selling them
into a distressed market, causing more
price dislocation, and the Bank of
England eventually had to step in and
and um stop stop the the spiral. Now, if
you'd had tokenized money fund units
that could have been posted and received
as collateral without forcing the money
manager to sell the underlying
securities in their portfolio. From a
systemic perspective, you've got the
regulators that are happy. From a market
perspective, you got the market that's
not dislocated. And then from a money
manager perspective, you got a portfolio
that keeps going. And from a user
perspective, both the collateral pledger
and receiver are receiving their
collateral quickly, straight away. those
smart contracts would be programmed to
move the collateral. So here is your
perfect use case and this is not a small
use case. So the whole DeFi world
obviously is a world that's expanding
enormously. But the world of traditional
collateral is a multi- trillion dollar
opportunity where money funds are not
yet widely used as collateral for all
sorts of reasons. But put a tokenized
wrapper around them and here's your
perfect use case. So I don't think it's
any accident that that's where we're
seeing huge growth in this in this
market. We have a perfect use case. We
have a solution that suits money fund
managers, collateral pledgers and
receivers, regulators, central banks. I
mean, it's such a perfect positive
storm. So, that's where this whole thing
in my opinion is going to take shape.
>> Excellent. Um, go ahead, Sandy. I think
>> uh so I think that I think those were
both excellent examples. We we really
are seeing I think two newer things that
are starting to happen is I think that
last year was kind of the year of stable
coins and I think there was a lot of
interest in stable coins, a lot of
growth in stable coins but I think it's
evolving beyond that now. Uh we're
calling it this universal liquidity
layer and this universal liquidity layer
is much more interoperable. It's getting
to a lot of what Kim just spoke about in
terms of collateral. It's getting
towards more optimized use of cash. Uh
it's getting towards me multiple uh
options and pathways as on and off
ramps. It's getting towards a growing
set of yieldbearing products, right? And
it's really becoming this liquidity
layer that is enabling everything to
start to move on chain because the cash
and the payment rails are there to now
make it easy to buy other assets on
chain. like we almost needed this
evolutionary step to get this layer
working where the financial system
itself can start to optimize access
payment utilization of assets on chain
the things that Cynthia was talking
about earlier. So I think there's a lot
of demand in this universal liquidity
layer to really begin to plug these
rails in. uh a lot of the announcements
that Ian and the Ando team were making
earlier uh around what they're trying to
enable with prime brokerage, what
they're trying to enable with per that's
all, I think, illustrative of this
universal liquidity layer. And now
because that is really advancing very
quickly, we're now able to start to be
launching the products on top of it that
are moving the assets out of these fragmented
fragmented
uh accounts that everything sits in
today into the wallet. And then getting
those assets into the wallet is where
new demand is emerging. Um new demand
from people who have wallets and want to
directly access assets. new demand from
people who have tremendous crypto
profits, whatever's left after the last
few days, but tremendous crypto profits,
uh that they're looking to get uh
diversified, right? We're going to start
to see now the product layer that sits
on top of this universal liquidity layer
expand a lot and there are multiple
demand sources emerging for that. So,
it's a very exciting time. Um what's
interesting is most of the demand
sources are still digitally native
demand sources and therefore it's flying
under the radar I think of a lot of the
traditional financial industry. You
really have to be aware of how the
infrastructure is developing to
understand where the pockets of demand
are coming from right now. But as things
move on chain that's going to become
better and better understood.
So it looks like demand we're seeing use
cases that are emerging well increasing
products on top of this universal
liquidity layer. As we think a bit ahead
of 2026
um what would you like to see happen
this year? What's feasible in your mind?
Uh so that next year at the summit I can
ask you the same question looking back.
Um maybe what I would add on from the
asset manager's lens and and this is the
the correlary to um all of the points
that Sandy just made is um when
when I look across um the innovation
that's happened in the asset management
industry over the last several decades
um asset management is really about
being able to deliver um professional
investment portfolio construction
professional ass investment management
um to investors in in packaged product.
Um so um we started with the mutual fund
um which was a tremendous innovation in
1940 um in the ability uh to be able to
aggregate a number of different clients
assets um and to deliver professional
investment management um through that
one vehicle one trade um you get access
to professional investment management.
Um next uh I would say comes the ETF
wrapper which gives you more real time
ability to trade that asset. Um I'd say
you know as as um I remember the days uh
when um Eyesshares was part of Barclays
and and Eyesshares um had a massive
retail campaign. Um but what was the
early um uh introduction to the ETF was
country baskets. It came out of the um
investment banking um um cash desks
where they were looking for ways to help
institutional investors hedge exposures
in more sophisticated ways than just
single assets. So from an asset manager
standpoint, that evolution of being able
to package that um into a daily um
intraday traded vehicle um advanced
better um uh investment and and trading
and and of course tax efficiency. Um
then came managed accounts which was
another massive innovation um in terms
of the technology that's um that it
takes to be able to say I can now manage
um hundreds of thousands in fact
millions of individual managed accounts
um personalized um somewhat based on the
technology um across many many investors
across the platform. So providing more
individualized ability to deliver that
professional investment that next
innovation that this now digital asset
market um and now with liquidity rails
facilitating the growth of this market
um is going to now allow us to provide
an onchain vault structure. That's the
next wrapper. We talk about the tokens.
Um, the vault um is effectively a
non-custodial uh wrapper that allows you
to be able to deliver investment
management at more hyperpersonalized
scale and and I know Sandy you love to
talk about right the range the the
widely expanded range of assets now that
can be incorporated into these vault
structures through digital assets. And
so um nobody's going to ask us for a a
vault of tokens. um they're going to ask
us for um more personalized financial um
solutions to help people manage their
financial lives. And I think this next
innovation for for us as asset managers
is not just the product, but it's the
client interface. How is it that we're
going to allow a um investors to access
this new broader range of products?
>> 100%. And I think that, you know, when
you say what would we'd like to see
happen that I really think that this is
going to be the year that we start to
push beyond thinking about what has
existed in the past as a product and how
do I get it on chain, right? I think
that this is the year that we are going
to start to lose the differential
between public and private product and
be able to blend them in ways that have
never been possible before. uh and I
think that this is going to be the year
that we start to move beyond US dollar
into a far more diversified set of
underlying products that are available
in different underlying fiat currencies
to really broaden out participation in
the ecosystem. Right? One of the great
potentials of this technology is to
bring countries that have had difficult
time getting equal share of global
capital dollars into their u existing um
initiatives. I think this is the year
that we really start to see very
interesting models emerging that are
bringing more countries into this
ecosystem and getting capital to flow
more fluidly across more of the globe.
I'll I'll cover kind of a different
topic. I mean, I think what's would be
interesting for me to see this year
would be more stuff around digital
identity and reliance in the space. Uh,
and I don't mean like a kind of a
government-ledd like you have a digital
identity now forever. I mean more of
like the ability to selectively share
your information or have different
financial institutions talk to each
other in a more native way using some of
what we see on chain as a way to kind of
get to the promise of like no walled
gardens in the space. Um, right now if
you're signing up with a new centralized
crypto exchange, you're providing all
your new information. Then you want to
go to Fidelity or Wizent Tree, you're
providing all your information there,
too. And like it'd be good to get beyond
that in a way such that people aren't
trapped within kind of the walled garden
of their ecosystem. And this applies
across both crypto at least for
centralized products as well as
traditional products. And I think this
technology allows you to do much more
than that. And um, I don't think it's
going to get solved this year. We've
been talking about it for like 10 years
now. So, I don't think it's going to get
solved in 2026, but it'd be interesting
to me to see like real steps there this
year. And I think that would be a very
consumerfriendly thing to do.
>> Well, I have to admit that on my
Christmas wish list for 2025 was um the
global regulators to get together and
and coordinate their approach to digital
assets. So I think for us that's a major
challenge in really scaling what we
we're all trying to build here. So uh
especially sitting in London where we
have the European Union on one side the
FCA that's trying to decide where they
fit in between both sides of the
Atlantic what's happening here you know
really interesting how quickly some of
the regulators in the Middle East have
moved it's so much easier to launch new
products there um and what's happening
in Asia. So I think for us regulation
regulation
regulatory harmonization to some degree
and getting some standard setting would
be absolutely critical for 2026. So I
hope when we're sitting here this time
next year we've had some of those loose
ends tied up um and and start seeing the scale.
scale.
>> Excellent. So hopefully a lot of
innovation um on the product identity
and then regulation I'm sure all of us
um are very focused on. Maybe in the in
the last couple of minutes would like to
project ourselves even further. Imagine
we're in a world we have trillions on
chain. What does asset management look
like from a product standpoint,
experience standpoint and we start it
touching on personalization but would
love to get your view like your vision.
How can this transform the asset
management experience?
>> Um happy to start. Um I would say um
from the standpoint of the way that um
asset managers function and and operate
um you know our core competencies uh
remain the same research, portfolio
construction, risk management. How it is
that we are able to express um these
competencies in creating um portfolios
and and being able to deliver those
exposures um is what then um is that
next generation of Wall Street 2.0. um
is the ability now to hyperpersonalize
and deliver down to the individual
investor. Not just what your long-term
um uh short, medium, and long-term um
financial goals are um but how to
actually hyperpersonalize that to the
standpoint of personal liquidity
management. You can now really tie your
day-to-day objectives to the way in
which um your entire portfolio is
constructed and how you can access that
portfolio. And it's all through the ease
of one app. Yeah, I would say that you
know there's going to be no differential
between banking, wealth management,
asset management, personal investing. Um
each person's totality of their wealth
is going to be represented in these
wallets and the advice layer that's
going to be able to be brought into that
and around that. the degree of
personalization, as Cynthia says, that's
going to be applicable to that and the
ability for every one of us to bring
every asset we own into the portfolio
and have it considered as part of our
personal exposures. That's going to be
commonplace. You're not even going to
notice this. This is going to be handled
by agents, by smart contracts. This is
going to just be your portfolio and the
way that it enables your life is going
to be happening moment to moment in your
life and you're not even going to notice
it because it's going to be so seamless
and smooth. That's right.
>> Yeah. I mean, I think there's going to
continue to be a lot of change in asset
management. The role of an asset manager
has changed probably a lot over the past
30 years. You know, dating back to when
uh Jack Bogle started Vanguard to today.
You know, things have changed a lot. So,
um I I think that's going to continue to
change. I think the role of curation is
going to continue to be very important
in a world where like everything is
going to be available kind of retail
access to financial markets is much
greater than it's ever been. So I think
there still is going to be a really
important role for curation advice uh in
that world.
>> Yeah, I'll take I'll take the
institutional article for a minute
because that's our core client base and
you know institutions have always had
the luxury of having customized
portfolios. I think what you'll see is
that level of customization with much
greater efficiency and lower costs. Um,
and then that will be brought not just
to an institutional investor but to each
one of us.
>> Excellent. Well, on that note, I think
we're right on time. So, thank you to
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