Aviva Investors and Ripple announced on October 26, 2026 the launch of a tokenized share class on the XRP Ledger for the Aviva Investors Sterling (GBP) Liquidity Fund, a £22 billion money market fund that has operated since 2002. The fund is a UCITS vehicle domiciled in Ireland, and the new share class adds £50 million to what Ripple describes as a digital access layer sitting alongside the existing structure.
According to Ripple, the arrangement is designed to "introduce a digital access layer, where shares can be represented on the network while maintaining the integrity of the existing fund structure outside XRPL." The underlying assets continue to be held by The Bank of New York Mellon, while Komainu provides institutional custody and Licuido supplies the digital asset infrastructure underpinning the tokenized share class.
The move follows an earlier deployment on July 29, 2026, when Aviva Investors launched a tokenized share class for its US Dollar Liquidity Fund, a launch that followed approval from the Central Bank of Ireland. Taken together, the two tokenized share classes now hold more than £86 million, equivalent to roughly 116 million US dollars, with the sterling-denominated tranche accounting for £50 million, or about 66 million US dollars, of that total.
What the fund offers investors
Ripple frames the purpose of the sterling fund in conventional money-market terms, saying it is meant to "obtain low-risk returns and daily liquidity by offering investors exposure to high-quality short-term debt instruments denominated in UK pounds sterling." The tokenization layer does not alter that investment objective; it changes how shares can be represented and accessed, while the fund itself continues to invest in short-dated sterling debt instruments as it has done for over two decades.
Working within existing rules
Both Aviva Investors and Ripple have been explicit that the structure is built to sit inside current regulatory frameworks rather than around them. Ripple states that the design is meant to "operate within existing regulatory frameworks, providing a scalable foundation for future innovations in fund distribution and market infrastructure." The earlier US dollar fund's approval from the Central Bank of Ireland underscores that the sterling launch follows a path already tested with an Irish regulator rather than a novel one.
For a European audience, the development is notable less for its size, £50 million is modest against the fund's £22 billion total, than for the identity of the manager involved. Aviva Investors is a long-established UK asset manager, and its willingness to put a share class of a regulated UCITS money market fund onto a public blockchain, using named institutional partners in custody and infrastructure, marks a step that keeps the underlying fund structure and its Irish regulatory oversight unchanged while adding a blockchain-based access point for investors.
