Aviva's £50m tokenised fund: what changes for investors

Aviva Investors placed £50 million into a tokenised share class of its Sterling Liquidity Fund. The company announced the move on 26 October.

The new class lets eligible investors hold units of the fund as digital tokens on the XRP Ledger. Aviva calls the product a "digital twin" of the existing fund.

The £50 million is the amount Aviva itself invested in the new class. It is not the size of the whole fund, which the company puts at £22 billion.

The tokenised units keep the same investment objective, risks and protections as the ordinary shares, according to Aviva. The fund still holds UK sterling short-term, investment-grade debt.

BNY Mellon remains custodian of the underlying securities. Komainu handles custody of the digital tokens, Licuido runs the tokenisation platform and Ripple is the technology partner.

The fund is regulated as an Irish money market fund. Token holders sit under the same rules as other investors in that structure.

This is not open to every crypto wallet. Access is limited to eligible investors, and the fund applies the same regulation as other Irish money market funds.

Aviva frames the gains as operational: simpler ownership records, more transparency, tamper-resistant bookkeeping and settlement. Those are the company's stated aims, not measured results.

Combined investment across Aviva's sterling and US dollar tokenised classes is above £86 million, per the company.

On 27 October, BNY and Ripple said BNY's digital asset custody platform now supports XRP and RLUSD. BNY also outlined plans to widen support for tokenised products on the XRP Ledger.

Those plans depend on final BNY and regulatory approvals. The announcement did not name any new function for Aviva's fund.

Aviva has worked on tokenisation since 2024. Senior investment director Alastair Sewell told Financial News the firm wants to tokenise more funds, starting with money-market funds.

Aviva is not first into tokenised money-market funds. BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and JPMorgan were named among earlier participants in a July article cited by the company.

Aviva says its entry makes it one of the largest tokenised money-market fund providers in Europe. That is the company's own claim about its position.

What remains open: how much demand the new share class draws, and whether the planned BNY expansion clears approvals. Until then, the £50 million is Aviva's own money in its own product.