BNY Unveils Blockchain Transfer Agency Plan Amid Tokenized Fund Surge

Bank of New York Mellon (BNY) is moving one of its core record-keeping businesses onto blockchain technology as part of Wall Street's infrastructure buildout for tokenized funds. The move is expected to create a single, digital record of ownership, reducing the need for multiple intermediaries in fund transactions.

BNY services about $8.6 trillion in assets across 7.6 million accounts and has more than $59 trillion in assets under custody and administration. Carolyn Weinberg, chief product and innovation officer at BNY, said 'We think of BNY as modernizing a function that sits behind every single fund transaction by bringing the books and records onchain.'

The bank will keep its traditional transfer agent and says trillions of dollars in funds will remain on existing rails for years. However, BNY is betting that a single ownership ledger can replace some of the costly reconciliation work that still runs through fund administration.