BBVA Asset Management (BBVA AM) is planning to issue a tokenized fixed income fund as part of a Spanish sandbox. The short term BBVA Token Renta Fija Corto Plazo will be issued on the private Allfunds Blockchain. As the fund will be part of the sandbox, it is not available for outside investment, so only employees will be able to invest. BBVA AM has €110 billion ($119 bn) in assets under management.
All subscription and redemption transactions will be executed on the blockchain ‘without this affecting the investor experience’.
“The project is a big step towards the adoption of a technology with immense transformative potential in asset management, starting out in a controlled and regulated environment that will enable BBVA AM to explore the benefits in a secure and scalable way,” said Belén Blanco, CEO of BBVA Asset Management Europe.
Allfunds Blockchain is part of the Allfunds fund distribution firm with €1.4 trillion in assets under administration. Apart from its fund tokenization offering, it has its FAST solution enabling data sharing amongst asset managers, distributors and intermediaries.
The Allfunds Blockchain arm was previously involved in the Spanish sandbox, for a fund tokenization project with Renta 4 Banco. In 2022 it said Alliance Bernstein would use its solution in Europe.
Subsequently, it ran a data sharing Business Lab in Italy with several big name asset managers, including BNP Paribas and Franklin Templeton, although the participants didn’t necessarily adopt the solution.
Meanwhile, the banking arm of BBVA was previously focused on digital bond issuance, perhaps ahead of its time. After winning an award in 2019 for the DLT bond solution, it went quiet on the subject.
