Tokenization Now Strategic Priority for 84% of Financial Firms, Broadridge Survey Finds

The Quick Take

• A Broadridge survey found 84% of financial firms now treat tokenization of assets as a strategic priority, marking a decisive shift from experimentation to institutional commitment.
• Wall Street firms are betting on hybrid markets where traditional and digital assets coexist, rather than a wholesale replacement of legacy infrastructure.
• CoinDesk reports the survey signals that real-world asset tokenization has moved from niche pilot stage to mainstream strategic planning at major financial institutions.

Synthesized from 1 source.

Financial industry adoption of asset tokenization has crossed a critical inflection point, according to Broadridge Financial Solutions' latest institutional survey. Eighty-four percent of financial firms — spanning asset managers, custodians, broker-dealers, and banks — now classify tokenization as a strategic priority rather than a speculative technology experiment. The Broadridge finding corroborates a shift that capital market participants have been tracking for two years: major custody banks, investment banks, and fund administrators are committing engineering resources, compliance frameworks, and C-suite attention to building tokenization infrastructure for fixed income, equities, and alternative assets.

The survey explicitly highlights the hybrid-market thesis as the dominant implementation model: Wall Street is not planning to dismantle traditional clearing and settlement infrastructure and replace it with blockchain-native systems. Instead, firms are building interoperability layers that allow tokenized assets to coexist with conventional securities, enabling atomic settlement, fractional ownership, and 24/7 market access for specific asset classes while legacy systems continue handling high-throughput vanilla trades. This approach de-risks the transition and provides regulatory comfort, since hybrid models can be brought within existing securities-law frameworks without requiring entirely new regulatory categories.

The strategic implications are substantial: tokenization at scale would compress settlement cycles (T+0 for tokenized bonds vs T+2 for traditional equities), reduce counterparty risk, and lower middle and back-office costs — areas where major custodians and prime brokers have historically charged significant fees. Watch for announcements from BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Franklin Templeton, which have been early movers in tokenized money market funds and Treasuries. The macro variable is regulatory clarity in the US and EU — the pace at which the SEC, CFTC, and MiCA framework address tokenized securities will determine how fast the 84% commitment translates into live production volumes.