Tokenisation is moving beyond government bonds and money-market funds into more complex private-market investments. Aberdeen Investments has appointed Finloop Finance to distribute tokenised interests in its Global Private Markets strategy to Professional Investors in Hong Kong, creating a new digital route into a diversified portfolio spanning private equity, private credit, infrastructure, real estate and natural resources.

The financial industry’s tokenisation experiment is entering a more complicated phase.

Rather than focusing solely on highly liquid assets, asset managers and wealth platforms are beginning to explore how blockchain-based ownership structures can be applied to private-market strategies, where high minimum investments, limited liquidity and operational complexity have traditionally restricted access.

Aberdeen Investments is the latest major asset manager to push into this area.

The company has appointed Finloop Finance, a subsidiary of Finloop, as a distributor for Aberdeen’s Global Private Markets strategy. Through the partnership, Finloop Finance will offer tokenised interests in the strategy to Professional Investors in Hong Kong through its global wealth technology platform.

The companies describe the initiative as one of the first tokenised interests in a global private-markets strategy of its kind in Hong Kong.

The move is less about turning private assets into instantly tradable securities than about modernising how investors access, transfer and administer interests in alternative investments.

Tokenising a Diversified Private-Markets Portfolio

Aberdeen’s Global Private Markets strategy is a semi-liquid approach spanning several private-market asset classes.

Its portfolio includes private equity, private credit, infrastructure, real estate and natural resources, giving investors exposure to assets that are generally less accessible than publicly traded stocks and bonds.

Private-market investments have become increasingly important for institutional portfolios, but their structure creates practical challenges for distribution.

Investments can require substantial commitments, involve lengthy settlement processes and carry limited secondary-market liquidity. Investor onboarding, ownership records and transfers can also involve considerable administrative work.

Tokenisation attempts to address some of these frictions by representing investment interests digitally on blockchain infrastructure.

Finloop says its FinRWA Platform (FRP) provides the technology underpinning the issuance and distribution of tokenised products. The platform is intended to support a more streamlined digital infrastructure around real-world assets while operating within applicable compliance requirements.

For investors, the potential benefit is not simply a digital representation of an existing investment. The larger proposition is a more efficient mechanism for managing ownership, distribution and potentially transferability.

Why Private Markets Are a Significant Test for Tokenisation

The private-markets segment presents both an opportunity and a test for tokenisation.

Unlike a publicly traded share, a private-market interest does not automatically become liquid simply because it is represented by a token. Liquidity depends on the underlying fund structure, investor eligibility, transfer restrictions, market infrastructure and availability of buyers.

That means tokenisation should not be confused with creating an unrestricted secondary market.

Its more immediate value may come from operational efficiency and transparency.

Digital records can potentially reduce manual processes around ownership and transfers, while programmable infrastructure can help standardise aspects of settlement and administration.

Aberdeen Chief Client Officer John McCareins said the company sees growing interest among high-net-worth individuals in private markets, while tokenisation is increasingly being viewed as an enabler of digital innovation in financial services.

The strategy is therefore positioned at the convergence of two trends: rising demand for alternative investments and the financial industry’s experimentation with blockchain-based infrastructure.

Hong Kong Becomes Another Tokenisation Test Market

Hong Kong has emerged as one of Asia’s more active markets for regulated digital-asset and tokenisation initiatives.

The city’s regulators and financial institutions have been developing frameworks around tokenised securities, stablecoins and other forms of digital financial infrastructure, while banks and asset managers have been testing blockchain-based settlement and collateral applications.

The Aberdeen-Finloop partnership adds another use case: tokenised distribution of a private-markets investment strategy.

For Hong Kong’s wealth-management industry, that could be particularly relevant.

The city has a large ecosystem of private banks, wealth managers, asset managers and professional investors. Digitising parts of the distribution and administration process could make alternative investments easier to integrate into digital wealth platforms.

At the same time, restricting the offering to Professional Investors underlines an important point: tokenisation does not remove existing investor-protection requirements.

The underlying investment remains subject to its applicable fund, regulatory and suitability framework.

Aberdeen Has Already Been Testing Tokenisation

The announcement is part of a longer tokenisation strategy for Aberdeen.

In early 2023, FCA-regulated digital-assets company Archax began offering tokenised interests in Aberdeen’s money-market funds.

Aberdeen subsequently worked with Lloyds Banking Group and Archax on the use of tokenised real-world assets as collateral. The project used tokenised units of Aberdeen’s money-market fund and tokenised UK government bonds as collateral for foreign-exchange transactions between Aberdeen and Lloyds.

That progression is notable.

Money-market funds and government bonds are relatively straightforward assets for tokenisation because they have established valuations, legal structures and liquidity characteristics. Applying the same infrastructure to private markets introduces additional complexity around valuation, liquidity and transferability.

The Finloop relationship therefore represents a further step in Aberdeen’s experimentation with blockchain-enabled asset management.

From Tokenised Assets to Tokenised Distribution

The broader significance may be the shift from tokenising individual assets to tokenising investment distribution.

Asset managers do not necessarily need to rebuild their underlying portfolios on blockchain networks. Instead, tokenisation can be applied to the way investors receive and manage interests in existing investment structures.

That model could eventually support more efficient cross-border distribution, digital onboarding, automated recordkeeping and potentially more flexible secondary transfers — provided regulation and market liquidity evolve alongside the technology.

Finloop CEO Cai Hua said the partnership demonstrates what the company sees as new possibilities for issuing and distributing tokenised products through its FinRWA infrastructure.

Aberdeen’s Head of Wholesale Distribution for Greater China, Tina Tong, similarly described the collaboration as a real-world application of tokenised distribution for private markets in Hong Kong.

For the asset-management industry, that is arguably the more important experiment.

Tokenisation has already demonstrated that blockchain can represent traditional financial assets digitally. The next question is whether it can materially improve the economics and user experience of distributing investments that have historically been difficult to access and administer.

The Institutional Opportunity

Aberdeen manages more than £77 billion in alternative assets, according to the company, giving the partnership meaningful scale within the private-markets ecosystem.

Its strategy spans multiple alternative-asset classes and uses research and analytics to support portfolio construction, risk assessment and liquidity management.

Finloop brings a different part of the equation: digital wealth infrastructure and tokenisation.

Combining the two illustrates where institutional tokenisation is heading.

The winning applications are unlikely to be those that simply put an asset on a blockchain. They will need to solve a practical problem — whether that is settlement, collateral management, fund administration, distribution, transparency or investor access.

Private markets offer several such problems.

If tokenised interests can reduce operational friction while maintaining regulatory controls and appropriate liquidity mechanisms, the technology could become a meaningful part of the infrastructure supporting alternative-investment distribution.

The Aberdeen-Finloop partnership is therefore less a bet on cryptocurrency than on digitising the plumbing of private-market investing.

That distinction could prove important as financial institutions move from tokenisation pilots toward products designed for real-world investors.

Market Landscape

Tokenised real-world assets are evolving from experimental blockchain projects into a broader financial-market infrastructure category.

Three developments are particularly important:

• Asset managers are exploring tokenised fund units and investment interests.
• Banks are testing tokenised deposits, securities settlement and collateral.
• Wealth platforms are using digital infrastructure to distribute alternative investments.

The competitive environment includes traditional institutions such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, JPMorgan and HSBC, alongside digital-asset infrastructure providers including Archax and other regulated tokenisation platforms.

The key competitive question is shifting from “Can an asset be tokenised?” to “Does tokenisation create measurable improvements in distribution, settlement, liquidity or administration?”

Private markets could become one of the most important proving grounds for that proposition.

Top Insights

• Aberdeen and Finloop are bringing tokenised private-market interests to Hong Kong, giving Professional Investors digital access to a diversified alternative-investment strategy.
• The strategy spans five private-market categories, including private equity, private credit, infrastructure, real estate and natural resources.
• Finloop’s FinRWA Platform provides the tokenisation infrastructure, targeting more efficient issuance, distribution, ownership management and transfer processes.
• Aberdeen’s move builds on earlier tokenisation experiments, including tokenised money-market funds and blockchain-based collateral transactions with Lloyds and Archax.
• Private markets represent a major tokenisation test, because digital ownership alone cannot solve underlying liquidity, valuation, regulatory or transfer restrictions.

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