84% of Financial Firms Now See Tokenization as a Strategic Priority

Key Insights:

• A new Broadridge survey found 84% of financial firms now consider tokenization strategically important to their business.
• Tokenized U.S. Treasuries continue to lead adoption as institutions prioritize low-risk, regulated assets.
• Most firms expect blockchain to work alongside existing financial infrastructure rather than replace it.

A new Broadridge survey found that 84% of financial institutions now consider tokenization strategically important, indicating a major shift in how Wall Street views blockchain technology.

Rather than treating tokenized assets as an experiment, most firms now see them as a key part of the future financial system.

Tokenization is Becoming Part of Mainstream Finance

The survey, conducted among 200 North American financial services executives, suggests the industry's focus has shifted from testing blockchain technology to preparing for real-world adoption.

According to Broadridge, 68% of respondents believe tokenization will reshape financial markets, at least in part, over the next three to five years. Investment is also accelerating, with nearly one-third of firms planning to increase spending on tokenization initiatives by 25% to more than 50% during the next two years.

The findings indicate that financial institutions are no longer asking whether tokenization will play a role in markets. Instead, they are deciding how quickly they can integrate it into their existing businesses.

Tokenization converts ownership of real-world assets such as bonds, stocks, funds, or real estate into digital tokens recorded on a blockchain.

By replacing multiple record-keeping systems with a shared ledger, the technology can speed up settlement, reduce operational costs, improve transparency, and enable fractional ownership of traditionally expensive assets.

How Tokenized Treasuries are Leading Adoption

While tokenization is expanding across several asset classes, U.S. Treasuries have emerged as the market's biggest success story.

The value of tokenized real-world assets on public blockchains has surpassed $25 billion this year, growing roughly 75% year-over-year. Nearly $15 billion of that total now comes from tokenized U.S. Treasuries, making them the largest segment of the market.

Major products such as BlackRock's BUIDL, Franklin Templeton's BENJI, and offerings from Ondo Finance have attracted billions of dollars, demonstrating that institutional investors are becoming increasingly comfortable holding tokenized versions of traditional financial assets.

The survey suggests this cautious approach is helping Wall Street build confidence before expanding tokenization into more complex asset classes.

Wall Street's Biggest Firms are Driving the Shift

Surprisingly, crypto-native startups are no longer driving the momentum of the tokenization wave. Some of the world's largest financial institutions are actively building blockchain infrastructure. JPMorgan has expanded its blockchain settlement platform, Kinexys, while Visa and DTCC continue developing infrastructure for tokenized payments and securities.

DTCC recently completed its first live production trades involving tokenized securities, marking an important milestone for traditional capital markets.

These developments have encouraged many other firms to move beyond pilot programs, with blockchain increasingly viewed as a practical upgrade to existing financial infrastructure rather than an entirely new financial system.

Most Firms Expect a Hybrid Financial System

Perhaps the survey's most important finding is that Wall Street is not expecting blockchain to replace traditional finance.

Instead, 92% of respondents believe digital assets and conventional financial markets will coexist for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, 69% said they plan to integrate tokenization into their existing trading, custody, and settlement systems rather than build separate blockchain-native platforms.

Adoption also varies across different parts of the financial industry. About 44% of capital markets firms already have tokenization projects running in production or at scale, compared with 20% of asset managers and only 9% of wealth management firms.

Executives also expect adoption to differ by asset class. Around 80% believe tokenized mutual funds and money market funds will become widely used within five years, while only about half expect tokenized equities to achieve similar adoption over the same period.