BNY, which has more than $59 trillion in assets under custody and management, is moving one of its core record-keeping businesses to blockchain as Wall Street builds the infrastructure for tokenized funds, the Financial Times reported Thursday.
“We see BNY modernizing a function behind every fund transaction by bringing books and records up the chain,” Carolyn Weinberg, chief product and innovation officer at the 242-year-old financial services giant.
BNY, which manages about $8.6 trillion in assets across 7.6 million accounts, said moving its transfer agency to blockchain would create a single record of ownership, eliminating the need for multiple intermediaries.
“We fully recognize that they have trillions and trillions of dollars in funds that … will continue to exist on traditional rails,” said Emily Portney, global head of asset services at BNY, the bank’s largest business.
BNY did not immediately respond to a CoinDesk request for more information.
Baillie Gifford, a BNY client with more than $261 billion under management, will use the service for what the firms describe as the first fully native tokenized fund regulated in the UK, according to the FT. BlackRock and Dreyfus, BNY’s money market and cash management business, are expected to use it for the planned funds.
