Federated Hermes, the Pittsburgh-based investment manager overseeing $911 billion in assets, plans to issue its first self-issued tokenized fund share classes in early 2027, the company told CoinDesk Tuesday. The firm is partnering with New York-based digital securities infrastructure provider Prometheum to distribute the products through traditional brokerage accounts and financial advisers.

The move marks a shift in approach. Previously, third parties — including London-based Archax, Goldman Sachs and Singapore-based Conduit Digital — created tokenized representations of Federated Hermes' existing products. Now the asset manager intends to issue tokenized share classes itself, according to Kevin Barr, director of digital asset products and platform.

"There's enormous interest in the industry at large around tokenized money market funds, [and] it aligns very well with the ballast of our franchise, which has been our liquidity funds," Barr said in an interview. He joined the firm in May after 15 years at custody bank BNY, most recently as head of digital cash and innovation.

Which funds will be tokenized?

The company has not disclosed which funds will receive tokenized share classes, nor which blockchains will host them. Money market funds are the likely starting point, Barr said, given the firm's large liquidity-management business. That gap in disclosure is worth noting: tokenized share classes remain a plan, not a filed product, until the firm names the funds and chains.

To put the timing in context, early 2027 sits roughly 18 months out — a long window in which registration details, chain selection and distribution agreements could all change.

How will investors access the shares?

Prometheum's SEC-registered broker-dealer subsidiaries will provide custody, clearing and settlement. Its correspondent clearing platform will let other broker-dealers offer the tokenized products to their own customers — meaning advisers would not need to rebuild their systems to sell them.

Barr argued that access, not blockchain technology, has been the main barrier to adoption. "For us, it becomes a natural extension of how we distribute our products today, and it just makes all the sense of the world from that perspective," he said.

Tokenized money market funds and U.S. Treasuries currently dominate Wall Street's tokenization efforts, letting institutional investors earn yield on cash around the clock and use tokens as collateral without selling holdings. BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, JPMorgan and, more recently, New York Life Insurance Company have all launched blockchain-based versions of traditional funds. Citi has projected the tokenized securities market could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030 — a forecast, not a measured figure, and one that assumes adoption far beyond today's base.

"You can have instantaneous movement of those funds," Barr said. "You can have programmability of those funds in a way that is perhaps more difficult or operationally inefficient with traditional infrastructure." Faster settlement and automated recordkeeping remain promises until the products operate at scale; the operational gains are real in principle but unproven in this specific deployment.

Barr framed the effort in broader terms: "Tokenization represents, in a lot of ways, a fundamental upgrade to financial market infrastructure for this generation." That is a strong claim from a firm whose first self-issued tokenized share class has yet to reach the market.

The takeaway is plain: a $911 billion manager is committing to issue tokenized shares itself, but fund selection, chain choice and regulatory filings remain undisclosed. The early-2027 launch window is the deadline to watch.