Why did Apex Digital commission a tokenization survey with Mergermarket — and what was it trying to find out?
Apex Digital partnered with Mergermarket to get a clear, data-grounded picture of how asset and fund managers are actually approaching tokenization in practice. The survey covered 100 senior managers across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC — at firms managing between $500 million and $5 billion in assets — and was built around three specific questions: where adoption currently stands, which use cases are taking shape, and what obstacles still prevent tokenization from moving beyond early adopters into the mainstream.
According to Tom Bennett, Global Head of Fintech at Apex Digital, the trigger for the research was a palpable shift in market maturity. Tokenized fund launches and tokenized real-world assets had become a near-weekly news story, signalling that the conversation had moved from speculative to operational. The survey was designed to put hard numbers behind that signal — not just confirming that adoption is happening, but understanding its depth, distribution, and friction points. You can explore the full episode and its findings on Listenly's The Single Source page.
"Everyone's talking about tokenization — but I think we've shifted into a different stage of maturity and adoption. You're seeing stories almost every single week of tokenized fund launches or tokenized real-world assets."
— Tom Bennett, Global Head of Fintech, Apex DigitalThe survey sample was deliberately structured for global representativeness, with roughly a 40/40/20 split between the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. By focusing on managers in the $500 million–$5 billion AUM range, Apex Digital and Mergermarket captured a segment that sits between early-stage crypto-native players and the very largest institutions — a cohort whose decisions tend to signal where the broader industry is heading. The resulting dataset places global real-world asset tokenization at approximately $25 billion, with US Treasuries tokenization alone having grown by 500% in less than two years.
About Tom Bennett
Tom Bennett leads fintech strategy at Apex Digital, the technology arm of Apex Group, one of the world's largest fund administration and financial services providers. In this episode, Bennett served as the primary voice on the strategic rationale behind the Mergermarket survey, explaining both the market context that prompted the research and the three core questions it was designed to resolve. His position gives him direct visibility into how tokenization is being adopted across the fund management industry at scale.
Bennett was interviewed alongside Angie Walker, Global Head of Commercialization at Apex Digital, who joined Apex approximately one year before the recording and oversaw a period of exceptional growth — from 31 tokenization projects in flight to 557 within a single year, representing roughly 2,000% expansion. Together, their dual perspective covers both the strategic intent of the survey and the commercial reality it reflects. Apex Digital itself holds approximately 16% of all global crypto fund administration, with 13 years of experience in the sector — context that gives the survey's findings considerable weight.