HedgeCo.Net — Schroders is bringing its Schroder International Selection Fund Emerging Market Bond strategy onchain through tokenization specialist Centrifuge, marking the global asset manager’s first deployment on Solana, Centrifuge and CoinDesk reported on November 4. Schroders oversaw about $1.1 trillion in assets as of June and has managed emerging markets debt for more than 50 years with over 40 dedicated investment professionals spanning sovereign, corporate and local-currency strategies.
Investors hold tokenized shares in a feeder fund with an onchain share class that invests in Schroders’ underlying Emerging Market Bond Fund, with share values tracking net asset value, CoinDesk reported. Centrifuge said the launch moves onchain fixed income beyond cash and short-duration government securities toward actively managed emerging markets credit risk and return. Anil Sood, Centrifuge’s chief strategy and growth officer, called emerging markets debt a fundamentally different source of risk and return for digital capital markets.
Marita McGinley, Schroders’ head of operations for APAC and digital assets, said the firm is tokenizing the strategy and issuing it on Solana to make its emerging markets expertise available to a new generation of investors. John Mensack, senior investment director of fixed income, said experience and active management matter especially in the asset class and that bringing relevant opportunities onchain helps make it more accessible. Nick Ducoff of the Solana Foundation framed the launch as a shift from tokenized cash products toward sophisticated, actively managed strategies on public blockchain infrastructure.
Solana hosts more than $4 billion in tokenized real-world asset value, Centrifuge said. The move follows Schroders’ August regulatory approval in Ireland for a tokenized share class of a U.S. dollar money market fund, Schroders Onchain Active Returns, or SOAR, and sits alongside broader tokenization plans from managers including Federated Hermes and New York Life’s asset management arm.
For allocators, the product is less a new bond strategy than a new distribution and collateral wrapper around an existing Schroders EMD book. Diligence questions include feeder-fund legal structure and custody, secondary liquidity for the tokenized share class, and whether onchain distribution changes who can hold emerging markets credit rather than how Schroders manages it.