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How Have Tokenization Teams Grown Inside Asset Management Firms?
A few years ago, tokenization work inside asset management firms was handled by a handful of people, often siloed inside standalone innovation teams. The Apex–Mergermarket survey of 100 senior managers shows that has changed dramatically: staff from across the entire business are now getting involved. The bottleneck is no longer internal will — it is talent, because the pool of people with the required skills is not growing as fast as demand.
The shift Tom Bennett describes is structural, not cosmetic. Tokenization is no longer a skunkworks project delegated to a small innovation unit tucked away from the rest of the firm. It has become an organisation-wide effort, drawing in legal, compliance, operations, product, and distribution teams simultaneously. This is the picture the Apex–Mergermarket survey captures across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC — explored in depth in The Single Source.
From Siloed Innovation Units to Cross-Functional Teams — and a Growing Talent Gap
Bennett is clear: while most S&P 500 firms and large financial institutions have now built digital innovation teams, those teams are not producing enough specialists fast enough. Subject matter expertise in tokenization — combining knowledge of blockchain infrastructure, fund administration, regulatory frameworks, and distribution — is genuinely scarce. Demand is outpacing supply.
This gap has a direct operational consequence. Asset managers cannot simply hire their way to full capability in-house. External service providers — those with established infrastructure, cross-chain distribution capability, and years of accumulated expertise — become structurally critical, not just convenient. It is a point Bennett develops further in this episode of The Single Source.
The survey covers senior managers at fund manufacturers and asset managers in private markets with AUM between $500 million and $5 billion. The "teams" referenced are internal groups — spanning any function — actively working on tokenization initiatives, whether in design, build, or live deployment.
"Distribution is king. Everything we do is actually all about distribution — whether that's distribution onto a chain or multiple chains, distribution to a centralized digital venue, a decentralized digital venue, or to an aggregator."
Tom Bennett — Global Head of Fintech, Apex Digital.
Bennett was interviewed alongside Angie Walker, Global Head of Commercialization for Apex Digital, by host Brian as part of the release of the Apex–Mergermarket tokenization survey. The survey covered 100 senior managers split approximately 40/40/20 across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. Apex Digital brings 13 years of experience in the crypto fund administration sector and today represents approximately 16% of all global crypto fund administration — a position of market authority that underpins Bennett's observations on how internal team structures are evolving across the industry.
Why External Providers Become Load-Bearing When Internal Talent Is Thin
The talent scarcity Bennett identifies is not a temporary friction — it reflects the speed at which the tokenization market has matured relative to professional education and hiring pipelines. Apex Digital's own trajectory illustrates the scale of demand: the firm grew from 31 tokenization projects in flight to 557 within a single year, representing approximately 2,000% growth. That volume requires depth of capability that most individual asset managers cannot replicate internally.
The survey's broader context reinforces the urgency. Global real-world asset tokenization has now exceeded approximately $25 billion, and US Treasuries tokenization grew by 500% in less than two years. Firms building tokenization capacity from scratch are doing so in a market that is already moving fast — as Bennett and Walker discuss throughout The Single Source.
The organisational implication is straightforward: firms that cannot build full internal teams fast enough need external partners with proven infrastructure, transfer agency capabilities, and multi-chain distribution reach. The survey makes clear this is not a niche concern — it applies across firms of all sizes surveyed, from $500 million to $5 billion AUM. This dynamic is examined in detail in the full episode.
See also
What regulatory developments does Apex Digital see as catalysts for mainstream stable coin and tokenized Treasury adoption?
Angie Walker points to the Genius Act and the Clarity Act in the United States as regulatory frameworks expected to drive mainstream adoption of stable coins and tokenized Treasuries — a development Apex Digital sees as a structural inflection point for the entire market.
What infrastructure investments has Apex Digital made to support 24/7 tokenized Treasury operations?
To support always-on digital transfer agency capabilities, Apex Digital undertook a major infrastructure upgrade and opened new large-scale support centers — enabling round-the-clock tokenized Treasury operations that traditional fund administration infrastructure was not built to handle.
How has Apex Digital's internal tokenization project pipeline grown over the past year?
Angie Walker reveals that when she joined Apex one year prior to the recording, there were 31 projects in flight at various stages including design, build, and deployment — a figure that grew to 557 projects within that single year, representing approximately 2,000% growth.
Key takeaways
- Tokenization teams have expanded from small, siloed innovation units to cross-functional groups involving staff from across the entire business.
- The talent gap is the critical bottleneck: the pool of people with real tokenization expertise is not growing at the same pace as market demand.
- Most S&P 500 firms and large financial institutions now have digital innovation teams, but depth of specialist knowledge remains scarce industry-wide.
- This structural talent shortage makes external service providers load-bearing partners for asset managers, not optional extras — a finding supported by the Apex–Mergermarket survey of 100 senior managers.
The full conversation — including the survey data, the talent gap, and what firms are actually doing to close it — is available on Listenly.
Listen to the episode on Listenly