BNY has begun moving the core ownership records of its institutional investment funds onto blockchain infrastructure, in a significant expansion of the bank’s digital asset strategy.
The New York-based custodian is rolling out a blockchain-enabled version of its transfer agency services, allowing records of fund ownership and investor dealing activity to be stored and updated on a shared digital ledger. Its traditional transfer agency operations will continue to run in parallel.
Instead of focusing solely on tokenising investment products, BNY is applying blockchain to the underlying record-keeping systems that sit behind fund administration. The new platform is designed to hold the official register of investors onchain, providing a single, synchronised dataset for all parties involved in managing and servicing a fund.
Carolyn Weinberg, BNY’s chief product and innovation officer, told the Financial Times the project is intended to modernise the “books and records” that underpin fund transactions by shifting them onto blockchain rails.
Shared ledger aims to cut duplication
Transfer agents are responsible for maintaining the definitive list of fund investors, processing subscriptions and redemptions, updating shareholder registers and supporting communications between asset managers and their clients. Those records are typically split across multiple systems run by fund managers, custodians and administrators, requiring continual reconciliation.
By placing those records on a common blockchain ledger, BNY aims to reduce the need for separate databases and manual checks, while allowing authorised market participants to view and rely on the same underlying ownership information.
According to the report, BNY’s transfer agency business currently supports around $8.6tn in assets across 7.6 million investor accounts. Separately, the bank oversees more than $59tn in assets under custody and administration, underlining the scale at which any new infrastructure could eventually operate.
Baillie Gifford among first adopters
Edinburgh-based asset manager Baillie Gifford is set to be one of the first institutions to use the new platform. The firm plans to deploy it for what it describes as the United Kingdom’s first fully native regulated tokenised fund.
“What we have in the blockchain is a shared source of record-keeping between the participants. We agree that this is the source of truth when people are dealing with the asset that this is monitoring,” said Theo Golden, Baillie Gifford’s head of digital assets.
The Financial Times report added that BlackRock, along with BNY Dreyfus’ money market fund and cash management business, is expected to make use of the platform for future tokenised fund offerings.
Baillie Gifford manages approximately $261bn in assets, according to information on the firm’s website.
BNY has not disclosed which blockchain network will underpin the new record-keeping system. Cointelegraph said it had contacted the bank for further details but had not received a response before publication.
USDC services broaden BNY’s digital role
The transfer agency launch is the latest in a series of digital asset initiatives from BNY in recent months.
In June, the bank added USDC minting, redemption, custody and transfer capabilities to its Digital Asset Custody platform. The move gives institutional clients direct on-platform access to Circle’s US dollar-pegged stablecoin via BNY’s existing infrastructure.
BNY already acts as the primary custodian for the assets backing USDC. The expanded services extend its role from safeguarding reserves into providing operational functions for the stablecoin itself. At the time of the announcement, BNY said USDC would be the first stablecoin supported on its custody platform, with additional stablecoins and digital cash workflows expected to follow.
The development came shortly after BNY partnered with Abu Dhabi-based Finstreet and the ADI Foundation to build institutional custody services for Bitcoin and Ether. That project is intended to broaden over time to cover stablecoins and tokenised real-world assets.
Regulatory momentum in Europe
BNY’s blockchain efforts have been accompanied by regulatory advances in Europe.
The European Securities and Markets Authority recently added BNY SA/NV, the bank’s Belgian subsidiary, to its interim Markets in Crypto-Assets register after the entity received authorisation from the National Bank of Belgium. The approval allows BNY SA/NV to provide crypto-asset custody and transfer services under the European Union’s MiCA framework.
That authorisation places BNY alongside a growing group of banks and financial firms securing licences to offer regulated digital asset services across the EU as the industry adapts to MiCA’s implementation timetable.
Taken together, BNY’s latest announcements indicate the bank is extending blockchain technology across several layers of institutional market infrastructure – from regulated crypto custody and stablecoin operations to the record-keeping systems that support tokenised investment funds.
