Aviva Invests £50 Million in Tokenized Share Class of £22 Billion Liquidity Fund
Key Facts
Aviva Investors and Ripple announced on 26 October 2026 the launch of a tokenized share class for Aviva’s sterling liquidity fund on the XRP Ledger. Aviva invested £50 million in the new share class, while its investment in the two tokenized share classes exceeded £86 million, according to Ripple’s announcement. The sterling fund has about £22 billion in assets, which the announcement described as Aviva Investors’ largest fund. The new share class is the company’s second existing fund to be tokenized, following the launch of a dollar liquidity fund share class in July 2026. The launch follows the companies’ announcement in February that they would work during 2026 and beyond to bring tokenized funds to the network.
The announcement distinguishes the size of the fund from Aviva’s investment in the share class: the approximately £22 billion in assets belong to the sterling fund, while £50 million represents Aviva’s investment in the tokenized share class. The announcement said this investment equates to $66 million, and that investment across the two share classes exceeded £86 million, or $116 million. The new share class is linked to an Irish-domiciled money market fund regulated under UCITS rules. It uses a “digital twin” structure to represent holdings on-chain while keeping the fund structure off-chain. Tokenization therefore applies to the share class and the way it is represented and made available digitally, rather than moving the fund’s entire assets onto the network.
Aviva said the traditional fund was launched in 2002 and targets low-risk returns and daily liquidity by investing in high-quality short-term debt instruments denominated in British sterling. It added that the tokenized share class retains the same investment objective, risk profile, liquidity characteristics and regulatory protections as the traditional fund. The share class is available to eligible investors with digital wallets, according to Ripple’s announcement. Komainu provides institutional custody for the digital assets, while Licuido provides the digital infrastructure, and the Bank of New York Mellon holds the fund’s assets. Aviva said its dollar share class, announced on 29 July, was the first tokenized share class for a company fund and received approval from the Central Bank of Ireland.
In the February partnership announcement, Jill Barber, head of distribution at Aviva Investors, said the company sees opportunities for tokenization to improve time and cost efficiency for investors. She added that Aviva is embracing technological developments it believes could benefit clients. Aviva’s chief executive said in the new launch announcement that the company wants to be a leader in the field and believes tokenized funds could increase efficiency and improve client outcomes. Ripple said in the partnership announcement that it expects the full impact of the technological efficiencies of tokenized fund structures to emerge over the next decade. This horizon places the companies’ statements about tokenization gains in the context of long-term development, while the sterling share class launch marks a new step after the dollar share class.
The move comes amid a broader market for tokenized money market funds, which the European Central Bank estimated had a total value of about €7 billion through April 2026, including nearly €725 million in funds domiciled in the European Union. The bank said tokenization could enable faster settlement, near-continuous availability and programmability, and also pointed to the potential use of these funds as collateral for traditional and crypto financial derivatives. It also warned of liquidity mismatches and operational vulnerabilities. In October, the International Monetary Fund said repurchase transactions account for most tokenized activity, with average daily trading of about $300 to $350 billion, while other tokenized assets add $65 billion a day. The fund compared this with the U.S. repo market, at about $13 trillion a day, and global capital markets representing assets worth $300 trillion.
The International Monetary Fund said more than half of trading in tokenized assets takes place outside traditional market hours, reflecting demand for continuous access. The fund identified legal certainty, regulatory clarity, interoperability and safe settlement assets as conditions for accelerating the growth of these markets. It also warned that their expansion could amplify fire-sale risks, runs and contagion by increasing interconnectedness and leverage. According to the announcement details, the new share class remains linked to a traditional fund whose assets are held by its custodian, while its structure enables holdings to be represented on a digital network. Aviva and Ripple announced in February that they would work on tokenized funds during 2026 and beyond, while Ripple said the full impact of technological efficiencies could take the next decade to emerge.