NEW YORK — Sandy Kaul, head of innovation at Franklin Templeton, says the next evolution in asset management will be “wallet-native” and not just digital.
Speaking at the Ondo Summit in New York on Tuesday, Kaur said she envisions a future where all financial assets — stocks, bonds, funds, etc. — are held and managed through tokenized digital wallets.
“People’s entire assets will be reflected in these wallets,” she said.
The panel, which included Fidelity’s Cynthia Lo Bessette, State Street’s Kim Hochfeld and WisdomTree’s Will Peck, agreed that tokenization is no longer a theoretical concept. After years of slow progress, the real infrastructure is now in place, and use cases are expanding beyond early experiments. But panelists also warned that building utility and trust is now the biggest challenge facing the industry.
“The idea of bringing assets on-chain and representing them with tokens is the easy part,” said Lo Bessette, head of digital asset management at Fidelity. “The hardest part is building a practical ecosystem.”
Despite recent growth, adoption is still in its early stages. Much of the current effort is focused on internal and customer education, said Hochfeld, global head of digital and cash at State Street.
“We haven’t seen an influx of people yet,” Hochfeld said. “We have to experiment … and see what works.”
This includes explaining the systemic benefits of tokenization. Hochfeld pointed to the UK mini-budget crisis of 2022, when legacy fund redemptions created a liquidity spiral. She believes tokenized funds can serve as instant collateral, mitigating disruption.
“This is your perfect use case,” she said. “It’s suitable for money fund managers, mortgage pledgers, regulators — everyone.”
WisdomTree’s Will Peck said customer interest is growing, particularly from crypto-native companies that manage stablecoin vaults or seek yield-generating assets that remain on-chain. He compared today’s wave of tokenization to the launch of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) 30 years ago.
“No one said, ‘I want an ETF,'” Peck said. “ETFs are doing better.”
The same model may now apply to tokenized products. As a new “universal liquidity layer” takes shape on blockchain rails, asset managers are preparing for a future of seamless, global access and hyper-personalized portfolios.
“You won’t even notice it,” Kaul said. “It’s going to be so seamless and smooth.”
