Federated Hermes to Issue First Directly Onchain Fund Shares in Early 2027

Federated Hermes, the Pittsburgh-based investment manager with roughly $911 billion in assets, plans to issue its first fund shares recorded directly onchain in early 2027, working with digital securities firm Prometheum.

The companies said the move takes Federated Hermes beyond past arrangements in which third parties tokenized its existing products. This time the firm intends to issue the share classes itself, with Prometheum’s SEC-registered broker-dealer subsidiaries providing custody, clearing and settlement. Prometheum’s correspondent clearing platform will let other broker-dealers offer the tokenized products to their own customers, putting the shares in front of traditional brokerages and financial advisers.

Kevin Barr, Federated Hermes’ director of digital asset products and platform, said money market funds are a likely starting point. “There’s enormous interest in the industry at large around tokenized money market funds,” he said, adding that it “aligns very well with the ballast of our franchise, which has been our liquidity funds.”

The firm has not disclosed which funds or which blockchains the tokenized classes will use, and the early 2027 timeline is a target rather than a fixed launch date, with fully onchain share classes dependent on how digital transfer agency models evolve.

The step extends a run of onchain moves over the past year. In October 2025 Federated Hermes partnered with UK-based Archax to give investors tokenized access to three UCITS money market funds on blockchains including Ethereum and Solana. In June 2026 it launched its Digital Treasury Fund, ticker OFFXX, set up with tokenized share classes in prospect, and in September it announced a partnership with Conduit Digital Holdings to build a regulated tokenized fund distribution system in Asia-Pacific.

Federated Hermes joins peers including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, JPMorgan and New York Life in putting traditional funds on blockchain rails. Goldman Sachs has also made tokenization central to its crypto push. Citi has projected the tokenized securities market could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030. Barr joined the firm in May 2026 after 15 years at BNY, most recently as head of digital cash and innovation. As of June 30, 2026, it managed $676.9 billion in money market assets.