U.K. Pension Giant L&G Looks to Enter Crypto’s Tokenization Space

Legal & General (L&G), the London-headquartered pension and investment management firm with $1.5 trillion in assets under management, is plotting an entrance into the blockchain-based tokenization space that’s growing popular among finance giants.

Tokenization – or the representation of conventional assets like U.S. Treasuries-backed money-market funds via tokens on a blockchain – has become popular among traditional finance firms. That accelerated after the arrival of BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, on the scene with its BUIDL fund on the Ethereum blockchain. Others are available from Franklin Templeton, State Street and Abrdn.

“We are evaluating ways to make the Legal & General Investment Management Liquidity funds available in tokenized format,” said Ed Wicks, global head of trading at Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), when asked about the firm’s plans via email.

“Digitization of the funds industry is key to improving efficiency, reducing cost and making a broad range of investment solutions available to a wider range of investors. We look forward to continued progress in this space,” Wicks said.

L&G’s dalliance with blockchain technology stretches back to 2019, when the insurer said it planned to use the managed blockchain system from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to manage and record bulk annuities for its insurance business.

LGIM is the asset management arm of L&G.