Quick take:
- abrdn examines future prospects for tokenization of investment funds.
- The company chose Hedera for its interest in strong management, operational efficiency, and environmental sustainability.
- abrdn will bring new perspectives on financial services management to the Council.
Publicly traded investment and insurance company abrdn has become the Hedera Governing Council’s first buyside finance and asset management company, the company announced today.
The Hedera Governing Council is governed by globally diverse industry members including Avery Dennison, Boeing, Chainlink Labs, Deutsche Telekom, EDF (Électricité de France), eftpos, FIS (WorldPay), Google, IBM, the Indian Institute of Technology ( IIT), LG Electronics, Nomura Holdings, ServiceNow, Shinhan Bank, Standard Bank Group, Ubisoft, University College London (UCL), and Zain Group.
Explaining its reasons for joining the Council, abrdn said in a press release that it believes distributed ledger technology (DLT) has the potential to change the structural inefficiencies that exist in the fund management industry.
With £508 billion in assets under management and supervision, the investment firm is currently evaluating future prospects for the tokenization of investment funds to underpin its vision for Web3 and has chosen Hedera for its interest on robust governance, operational efficiency, and environmental sustainability in a Proof-of-Stake network.
Abrdn aims to list tokenised investment funds on a digital exchange and sees the potential to work with service providers to use Hedera for their other DLT-based services, enabling a fully on-chain experience for fund investing.
“We chose to join several leading global organizations on the Hedera Governing Council, because Hedera’s emphasis on strong governance, innovation, and sustainability aligns closely with our values. With the fast speed and asynchronous security of Byzantine Fault Tolerance (ABFT), Hedera offers a very promising DLT solution for the fund management industry and we look forward to joining them on their journey,” said Duncan Moir, Senior Investment Manager at abrdn
With over 5,000 employees worldwide, abrdn will bring new insights into financial services management to the Council. In contrast to other participating members of the financial institution, such as banks, asset management companies have liability obligations that create a higher barrier for management. abrdn sees partnership opportunities to work with other Council members who provide services for the fund management industry, including banks, law firms and technology companies to drive transformation of inefficient structures through DLT.
“As abrdn leads the investment industry to move to tokenized assets, the Hedera network provides them with the underlying technology to overcome barriers and offer an increasingly sophisticated experience to their clients, paying for layer of services that contribute to the management of their assets,” said Bill Miller, co-chair of the Membership Committee for the Hedera Governing Council.
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