Sterling Liquidity Fund adds a tokenised share class

Aviva Investors, the global asset management business of Aviva plc, has launched a tokenised share class of its Sterling Liquidity Fund. The approximately £22 billion in the 26 October 2026 announcement is the size of that existing fund, which the firm calls its largest. Aviva has invested £50 million ($66 million) in the new class. The same announcement puts the amount invested across this class and a dollar tokenised class from July 2026 at more than £86 million ($116 million). Holdings in the sterling class are recorded on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). The whole fund, Aviva's subscription and the combined tokenised book are three separate lines.

The structure is a digital twin, a record of the holding laid over the portfolio the manager already runs. Aviva Investors describes the model as a digital access layer in which holdings can be represented on-chain while the existing off-chain fund structure stays intact. Investors in the tokenised class receive the same investment objective, risk profile, liquidity characteristics and regulatory protections as holders of the conventional fund, launched in 2002. The vehicle is an Ireland-domiciled UCITS money market fund (MMF) that targets low-risk returns and daily liquidity through high-grade sterling-denominated short-term debt. Aviva Investors Luxembourg is named as management company of the fund. Eligible investors with digital wallets can hold the class, and the firm says the structure is designed to operate inside existing regulatory frameworks. In the United Kingdom the announcement is issued by Aviva Investors Global Services Limited, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

All assets of the fund are held by its custodian, The Bank of New York Mellon. Komainu, a regulated institutional digital-asset custodian, supported the launch alongside Licuido, a platform that lets asset managers tokenise and trade real-world assets. Ripple is the enterprise partner for issuing and managing the share class on the XRPL. The announcement says that ledger, running since 2012, has processed more than 4 billion transactions, supports nearly 8 million active wallets and is maintained by at least 130 independent validators. Those ledger totals describe the network rather than the sterling fund.

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This is the second tokenisation of an existing Aviva Investors fund, after the US Dollar (USD) Liquidity Fund share class in July 2026. The firm says the sterling launch makes it one of the largest tokenised MMF providers in Europe, a ranking the release footnotes to RWA.xyz. On the figures the announcement prints, that claim sits beside the combined tokenised book, and the £22 billion remains the conventional portfolio. The release places the £50 million and the sum above £86 million side by side and does not spell out whether Aviva's subscription sits inside the combined total, or what other investors have added to the sterling class.

Mark Versey, chief executive at Aviva Investors, said tokenised funds "can increase efficiency and ultimately lead to improved client outcomes," and that the sterling class "sets the groundwork for a future expansion of our capabilities." Nigel Khakoo, senior vice president for trading and markets at Ripple, said markets "are moving to 24/7 access and settlement is moving to real-time, always-on rails." The fund section of the same release still assigns tokenised investors the daily-liquidity target and the other characteristics of the conventional fund launched in 2002.

The nearer comparison for custodians and treasurers is other tokenised cash share classes. BlackRock has put 12 money market share classes into tokenised form on Kinexys, a digital record on an existing cash fund. Spiko's Series B is aimed at tokenised cash. The FIX Trading Community has flagged tokenisation data gaps to the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England. Aviva Investors states that the business operates in nine countries and managed £273 billion as at 30 June 2026.

Further eligible investors using digital wallets, or the same digital-twin pattern on another Aviva Investors fund, would show the sleeve becoming a distribution channel. A combined tokenised book that stays near the figure published on 26 October would show an infrastructure step on a £22 billion fund whose assets remain with The Bank of New York Mellon.

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