Investment manager Hamilton Lane is planning to issue three new blockchain-native share classes of its Private Assets Fund on the Provenance blockchain. It is a so-called 1940 Act fund, and will use Figure‘s Digital Fund Service platform. Figure Technologies founded the Provenance blockchain.
Hamilton Lane has more than $835 million in assets under management. It’s no stranger to blockchain, having launched a tokenized fund in Asia with Singapore’s ADDX earlier this year, and more recently tokenized three funds with Securitize.
“Hamilton Lane was one of the earliest major private markets firms to tokenize a fund, and we remain committed to identifying innovative technology solutions as a means of solving for some of the traditional pain points in the asset class,” said Victor Jung, Head of Digital Assets at Hamilton Lane.
Figure Technologies’s Digital Fund Service supports cap table management, capital calls, distributions and shareholder communications. Fifteen other funds and special purpose vehicles are already on the Provenance blockchain. Last year Figure partnered with Apollo Global Management to explore putting funds on blockchain.
Meanwhile, Figure is involved in an array of blockchain activities. It runs a retail-focused home lending arm, is one of the founders of the USDF stablecoin consortium for banks, and has a subsidiary that was approved as an Alternative Trading System for equities and funds.
For several years there have been multiple initiatives in Europe working on blockchain for funds, but much of that work focused on fund distribution by the likes of Calastone, Allfunds and FundsDLT. However, this year asset managers have woken up to the possibilities with KKR and the UK’s abrdn taking an interest in addition to the major fund administration firm Apex.
