Aviva Invests £50 Million in Tokenised Class of £22 Billion Liquidity Fund
Key Facts
Aviva Investors and Ripple announced on October 26 the launch of a tokenised share class of the Aviva Investors Sterling Liquidity Fund on the XRP Ledger. Aviva invested £50 million, equivalent to $66 million according to the company statement, in the new class. The underlying fund has assets of about £22 billion, making it Aviva Investors’ largest fund. The £50 million represents the company’s investment in the tokenised class, while the £22 billion figure refers to the assets of the entire fund. Aviva said this is its second tokenisation of an existing fund, following the launch of a similar class for its dollar liquidity fund in July 2026.
The class adds a digital representation of shares in an existing money market fund, while Aviva’s statement describes the operating model as a “digital twin” of the holdings on-chain, with the fund structure remaining off-chain. The fund is based in Ireland and operates within the UCITS money market fund framework. The arrangement is based on a traditional fund launched in 2002, which targets low-risk returns and daily liquidity through high-quality, short-term debt instruments denominated in sterling. Aviva says the tokenised class retains the same investment objective, risk profile, liquidity characteristics and regulatory protections as the traditional class. The company thus presents tokenisation as a way to add digital representation to an existing investment structure while retaining its stated characteristics.
The class is available to eligible investors with digital wallets, according to Aviva. The fund’s assets remain in the custody of BNY Mellon, the fund’s custodian, and are not transferred to investors’ digital wallets. Komainu and Licuido also took part in the launch, according to the company statement. The statement did not name a specific technical token standard, describing the class only as tokenised and available on the XRP Ledger. The arrangement rests on separating the digital representation of shares from the custody of fund assets under traditional arrangements. Aviva said investors receive the same regulatory protections available in the traditional class.
The launch extends to a network that Aviva says has processed more than 4 billion transactions since 2012, supports nearly 8 million active wallets and is operated by more than 130 independent validators. The company provides these figures in describing the infrastructure hosting the new class. In July 2026, Aviva and Ripple launched a tokenised class for the dollar liquidity fund, the company’s first fund tokenisation. Aviva said at the time that the class had received approval from the Central Bank of Ireland and described it as a regulatory first for tokenised fund structures. With the launch of the sterling class, the company now has two tokenised offerings, with total investments exceeding £86 million, or $116 million, according to the October statement.
Mark Versey, chief executive of Aviva Investors, said the company believes tokenised funds “can increase efficiency and ultimately lead to better customer outcomes”. He added that Aviva is looking forward to exploring further tokenisation opportunities with Ripple. The statement did not specify a timetable for launching other classes or any subsequent implementation steps. The announcement comes as the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England work with 16 firms on issuing and settling live tokenised assets through the Digital Securities Sandbox, as announced in May 2026. Sarah Breeden, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, said the next task is to move “from experimentation to production” through public-private collaboration to support financial stability and sustainable growth.
On another front in the British market, the Treasury announced on October 6 the appointment of 6 lead managers for a pilot digital government bond issuance, expecting the issue to take place by the first quarter of 2027. A British government report published on July 13 also estimated that the tokenised real-world asset market could reach $88 trillion by 2035. A report by the Wholesale Digital Markets Champion recommended accelerating tokenisation use cases in repurchase agreements, fixed income and over-the-counter derivatives, with repurchase agreements as the focus during the following year. These estimates and priorities place Aviva’s launch within a broader trajectory of institutional and regulatory experimentation in Britain. In available market data, Aviva shares listed under the ticker AVVIY closed at $19.29 on October 27.