New York — The next evolution of asset management will be “wallet-native,” not just digital, according to Franklin Templeton’s chief innovation officer, Sandy Kaul.
Speaking at the Ondo Summit in New York on Tuesday, Kaul said she envisions a future where all financial assets — stocks, bonds, funds and more — are held and managed through tokenized digital wallets.
“All of people’s assets will be represented in these wallets,” she said.
The panel, which included Cynthia Lo Bessette of Fidelity, Kim Hochfeld of State Street and Will Peck of WisdomTree, agreed that tokenization is no longer a theoretical concept. After years of slow progress, 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 industry’s biggest challenge.
“The idea of bringing an asset and representing it onchain with a token is the easy part,” said Lo Bessette, head of digital asset management at Fidelity. “The hardest part is building the ecosystem for use.”
Despite recent growth, adoption is still early. Hochfeld, State Street’s global head of digital and cash, said much of the current work is focused on internal and client education.
“We don’t yet see a rush to the door,” Hochfeld said. “We have to experiment… and see what works.”
That includes explaining the systemic benefits of tokenization. Hochfeld pointed to the UK mini-budget crisis in 2022, where traditional fund redemptions created a liquidity spiral. She argued that tokenized funds could have served as immediate security and eased the disruption.
“Here’s your perfect use case,” she said. “It suits mutual fund managers, pawnbrokers, regulators — everyone.”
Will Peck of WisdomTree said client interest is growing, particularly from crypto-native firms managing stablecoin treasury holdings or seeking return-bearing 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 at that time was like, ‘I want an ETF,'” Peck said. “The ETF just worked better.”
The same pattern can now apply to tokenized products. With new “universal liquidity layers” forming on blockchain rails, asset managers are preparing for a future of seamless, global access and hyper-personalized portfolios.
“You’re not even going to notice,” Kaul said. “It’s going to be so seamless and smooth.”
