Sorin Jitaru
Digital Assets expert

The highly regulated finance industry takes a prudential approach to investment and technological innovation, and is now facing its next big transformation. Asset tokenisation, or converting real-world assets to digital tokens held on a blockchain, could revolutionise the hedge fund industry.

For hedge fund managers, institutional investors, and distributors, this new technology could democratise access to the sector and enhance liquidity across long/short equity, global macro, and fixed income arbitrage strategies. The adoption of tokenisation technology could strengthen Europe’s position in terms of financial innovation and enable more investors to benefit from hedge fund assets within their investment portfolios.

Tokenisation’s potential is greater than mere technological innovation. By combining traditional hedge fund structures with blockchain technology, the investment industry could meet longstanding challenges related to investor access, operational efficiency, and portfolio liquidity.

Democratising hedge fund access through fractional ownership

Hedge funds have historically been the preserve of large institutional investors and ultra-high-net-worth individuals due to high minimum investments and regulatory barriers. Tokenisation fundamentally challenges this exclusivity using several key mechanisms.

Firstly, fractional ownership converts fund shares into digital tokens, allowing investors to purchase fractions of units in previously inaccessible strategies. It is exactly the same approach as used in traditional money market funds.

There are also the streamlined administrative processes that could see lower costs associated with serving a broader investor base. And finally for hedge fund managers, this technology enables targeted outreach to a growing segment of younger digitally-native investors who increasingly expect seamless digital experiences. 
Tokenisation’s benefits extend beyond accessibility as by broadening the investor base, hedge funds could also develop more stable capital bases while offering sophisticated strategies and investment diversification opportunities to a wider range of investors, including previously excluded retail investors …

Read the full article on The Digital Assets Edge website

Scott Foster
Head fo Digital &
Governance Solutions
CACEIS UK

The UK pensions sector is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by a combination of regulatory ambition and economic growth agenda. With the government's recent "Workplace Pensions: A Roadmap" setting out a comprehensive reform agenda, and new legislation making its way through Parliament, pension professionals face both unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Here we seek to understand the key developments set to reshape the UK pensions landscape, from scheme consolidation and investment reform to the emergence of new pension models that promise to deliver better outcomes for members while supporting broader economic growth.

Continued Consolidation: Building Scale for Better Outcomes

The government's analysis (Pensions Investment Review: Final Report from May 2025) of the UK's pensions market reveals a stark picture of fragmentation, with 5,000 DB schemes holding around £1.4 trillion in assets and hundreds of DC schemes with fewer than 100 members.
This sub-scale operation has tangible consequences for savers, including costly governance requirements and limited economies of scale in asset diversification, which are putting pressure on the value for money proposition of smaller schemes.

The government's solution, articulated in the Pension Schemes Bill, is clear: create "a smaller number of bigger, better governed, better value pension providers". The evidence from both the UK and internationally from markets such as Australia supports this direction. In the DC trust market, consolidation into Master Trusts has already driven significant acceleration in assets under management, permitting higher efficiency through scale. The push for consolidation also presents an opportunity to address the long-standing difficulty in comparing pension fund performance – a challenge in a market where thousands of funds operate with different objectives and approaches to benchmarking ...

Read the full article on The Pensions Management Institute (PMI) website (page 42)

Eamonn O’Callaghan
Group Product Manager

The key benefits that ETFs deliver; liquidity, ease of access, cost and transparency consistently resonate with investors, both institutional and retail, that drove their decision to purchase the product. Below we summarise some of the key themes in the European market over the past year, which despite some macro headwinds has again proved to be very positive.

“With ETF assets currently hovering at 25% of mutual funds, and forecasts it can grow to 40%, this points to a promising 2026 and beyond”, Eamonn O’Callaghan, group product manager at CACEIS Ireland Limited

Growth

Following the same trend as previous years, ETF assets continue to grow rapidly. In 2025 inflows peaked at >$333bn, representing significant 36.7%YTD growth. September marked a new milestone with total ETP assets rising above the $3trn mark. Many commentators point to ETF assets doubling by 2030 with 2025 certainly viewed as a building block to reach that target.

New kids on the block

The influx of new asset managers entering the ETF space has continued with 25 new entrants over the past year. This was largely comprised of US managers looking beyond their borders to distribute product into Europe and domestic European managers stepping into the ETF space for the first time.

The flexibility and recognition of the UCITS wrapper is important in these decisions. UCITS products can be sold across Europe and there are also a number of markets outside of Europe where they can be distributed, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Chile and Mexico.

Ireland continues to be the domicile of choice now holding >75% of all European ETF assets ...

Read the full article on Funds Europe website

CACEIS in Luxembourg

Today, CACEIS is one of Luxembourg’s ‘Top 3’ asset servicing groups (Monterey Insight), and a major employer. Through organic, partnership and acquisition growth, notably the purchase of RBC’s and Degroof Petercam’s European activities, we’ve massively increased our footprint here, with offices on the Glacis and in Esch. For the takeovers, we leveraged our vast experience of integrating staff and migrating clients to perform the smoothest possible transition with uninterrupted service for our new clients while ensuring our existing clients’ continued satisfaction.

Read the full article on PAPERJAM website

Previously viewed as an operational task, liquidity management under the Wtp is now a strategic pillar within overall risk management. Simultaneously, the growing use of derivatives and central clearing obligations is elevating the importance of effective collateral management. While traditionally used to ensure smooth settlement cycles, securities finance has evolved into a key tool for sourcing liquidity efficiently. Pension funds are increasingly utilising securities finance to meet this growing demand for liquidity. In this context, repurchase agreements (repos) present a valuable instrument for sourcing liquidity temporarily, ensuring long-term investment strategies remain intact while effectively managing risk exposures.

In a recent roundtable discussing changes in the Dutch pension sector and how securities finance products naturally fit in offering solutions, Maurits Daarnhouwer, pension fund regulation expert, discussed the topic with securities finance front-office and client-facing experts, Beta Steiner, Olivier Zemb, and Joanna Ksenzova.

Read the full article on Financial Investigator website

After nearly a decade of limited progress following Ethereum’s 2015 smart contract breakthrough, 2024 has emerged as a potential inflection point, marked by landmark initiatives from major US asset managers.

This resurgence comes after years of cautious experimentation. Early movers who partnered with fintech providers around 2020 found solutions that operated at the periphery of core investment operations rather than integrating seamlessly with existing fund ecosystems.

Today, however, three critical enablers are converging: regulatory clarity through frameworks like MiCA in Europe, technological maturation of institutional-grade DLT solutions, and a growing investor appetite for digital asset exposure.

Read the full article on Funds Europe website

Investors were drawn to private debt for its diverse strategies, risk-adjusted yields, and reliable income. Portfolio diversification and access to retail capital via fund platforms fuelled its rapid growth as a leading alternative asset class.

While known for funding SMEs, private debt encompasses multiple strategies. Common approaches include senior secured debt for M&A deals, higher-risk mezzanine debt with equity conversion, and distressed debt for restructuring troubled companies. It also finances special situations, infrastructure, real estate, and supports private equity ventures.

The sector is poised for significant growth, with Morgan Stanley predicting it could reach $2.6tn by 2029 (source: Prequin) as banks retreat and investors seek inflation-beating returns.

Read the full article on Paperjam website

Currency markets are in flux, driven by geopolitical tensions, shifting monetary policies, and unpredictable economic data. For investment managers, this volatility isn’t just noise, it’s a material risk that can erode returns. The recent slide in the USD against the EUR, fuelled by trade tensions, underscores the need for robust currency risk management as unhedged foreign exposures can amplify portfolio swings, turning diversification benefits into unintended liabilities.   

Hedging strategies: Passive, active, or hybrid?   

Managers have three broad choices when managing FX risk: ignore it, hedge passively, or take an active approach.   

Passive hedging is a rules-based method to neutralise currency risk, typically using FX forward contracts. It’s cost-effective and reduces volatility, making it ideal for conservative portfolios. Key considerations include timing, hedge ratios, tenor, and rebalancing tolerance, all of which must align with liquidity and risk constraints.   

Active currency overlay seeks alpha by exploiting market trends or macroeconomic views. While potentially rewarding, it demands both expertise and strong governance.   

Hybrid approaches are gaining traction, using partial passive hedging with tactical adjustments on selected currencies or asset types. Dynamic hedge ratios, for instance, can lock in gains when a currency strengthens or limit losses when it weakens.   

The right strategy depends on portfolio objectives: unhedged defensive assets may suit investors with volatile home currencies, while fixed income-heavy portfolios often warrant near-full hedging.   [...]

Read the full article on The Trade News website

AI, and especially its close cousin - machine learning, has long been implemented in specific areas of the finance world. It has helped the industry gain operational efficiencies, provide simple chatbots, and sort through vast collections of data to identify trends, report on performance and uncover fraud. However, today, AI is once again right at the centre of the hype machine, with Generative AI and GPT as the new tech buzzwords. Generative artificial intelligence consists of algorithms that can be used to create new content, and a Generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) is a type of model that specialises in generating text. Hype usually leads to over-promising and under-delivering so it is essential to look in depth at the technology’s real-world capabilities and identify practical use-cases. Although the possibilities of generative AI seem endless, our industry, with its reliance on procedural accuracy, speed of operation and huge transaction volumes may well be more suited to traditional or discriminative AI than to generative AI. The key component of both traditional and generative AI is without doubt the datasets it has access to. The now classic “garbage in – garbage out” concept remains entirely valid in the age of AI, where stand-alone off-the-shelf algorithms require quality data in a quantity that allows for accurate training and assessment. Good data governance, boring as that may sound, therefore remains at the heart of the entire headline-grabbing AI revolution.

All companies in our industry will have access to the same standard ‘blank-slate’ AI algorithms promoted by technology companies. This means that the differentiating factor for companies looking to leverage AI tech is less in the algorithm acquired and more related to available datasets, training methods and mastery of prompts or queries. However, there is a huge range of available AI algos, so the selection process is very complex especially as each one needs to be rigorously tested for specific tasks using a large set of quality training data. This could be very time consuming and may [...]

Read the full article on Informa website

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Since CACEIS’  formation in 2005, resulting from the merger of two large French banks’ asset servicing divisions, the group’s expansion strategy has been built on seizing partnership deals and acquisition opportunities in combination with a sustained organic growth trajectory.  CACEIS has played a major part in the European asset servicing consolidation trend, and today operates in 18 markets around the world, providing custody for some €5 trillion in client assets and administering in excess of €3.4 trillion.

CACEIS’ most recent and perhaps most transformative acquisition was the July 2023 purchase of RBC Investor Services’ activities in Europe, which added a major book of business to its operations and is scheduled for completion by the end of the year. The acquisition not only expands the group’s geographic footprint in Europe but also included an operations centre in Malaysia with over 1,200 staff.

Back in 2019, CACEIS acquired KAS Bank, a Dutch custodian and pension servicing group and earlier that year, the group combined with Santander Securities Services (S3), the custody and asset servicing division of Santander, broadening its coverage in Spain and taking the group into Latin America, with fully-functioning entities in Brazil, Columbia and Mexico. CACEIS believes that consolidation in the asset servicing industry will continue and is keen to remain a key consolidator in Europe and abroad.

CACEIS group provides a full range of securities services to a varied international clientele including asset managers, insurance companies, pension funds, banks, private equity and real estate funds, brokers and corporate clients. While the backbone of the group’s offer remains client-focused asset custody, depositary and administration services, it promotes a vast range of additional solutions for clients through its network of offices across Europe, North and South America, and Asia.

While the CACEIS group is focused on increasing the scale and scope of its asset servicing operations, the Market Solutions division benefits downstream of this through access to a broader pool of international asset owners for its securities lending programmes and new markets for its securities financing operations.

Market Solutions Focus

CACEIS’ Markets Solutions division offers modular client-focused services and a secure gateway to the financial markets. It covers execution, through risk management and middle-office services, all the way to custody – an ‘execution-to-custody’ model, which is a unique in the market. The staff provide solutions for every aspect of over 1000 clients’ market needs, including all post-trade tasks. These clients benefit from a high level of transparency, enabling them to closely monitor delegated activities across the full range of execution, clearing, forex, and securities finance services.

Execution

The execution team enables clients to place orders on over 100 markets dealing in stocks, ETFs, bonds, futures and options, and on any underlying asset type, from rates, securities and indices, to raw materials and forex. All transactions are fully integrated with our custody platforms to boost clients’ operational efficiency and transparency.

Clearing

The fully-integrated global clearing offer plays a key role in streamlining clients’ post-trade workflows and optimising associated costs, covering clearing, settlement, valuation, confirmation and custody. CACEIS is a general clearing member on Eurex, LCH, ICE and other clearing houses, offering clearing coverage for some 97% of the volumes handled. CACEIS takes care of external capital flows and can pledge a wide range of collateral, including government bonds, corporate bonds and equities by leveraging our unique risk profile and a collateral segregation policy to secure the transactions.

Foreign Exchange

The Luxembourg-based Forex desk offers many client-oriented solutions for investment managers, and their middle- and back-office teams. Combining competitive pricing with a principal model, trading on all convertible currencies with extended cut-offs, and hedging via NDF and NDS on non-convertible currencies, allows us to meet most managers’ Forex needs. And on the back & middle office side, our full STP processes cover the entire flow, from negotiation to accounting, enabling clients to raise efficiency and benefit from an audit trail that ensures price traceability.

In addition, our solutions help clients to reduce fixed costs, as forex desk transactions are free of settlement, or any other additional fees. The desk covers Spot, Forward, Swap, NDF or option trades on any of the wide range of products and currencies. Clients also benefit from an Online Forex Trading platform which is available through FX-All, Bloomberg and 360T.

Securities Finance

The Securities finance desk provides solutions designed to help clients optimise portfolio returns or create necessary liquidity. Its staff has in-depth experience in setting up repo agreements, asset switches, and bespoke collateralised financing solutions, such as fund shares financing, to boost performance or create liquidity. Working on an agency, principal or remote basis, the desk lends idle securities to a select pool of counterparties in exchange for high quality collateral, and generates secure additional revenues for portfolios. The securities finance desk’s client-oriented solutions ensure safety and transparency of the activities, especially due to the automatic integration of operations data with post-trade custody services. With global market coverage, multi-asset capabilities and full custody service integration, the desk offers a high level of transparency combined with a strong recall process that even be automated for General Meetings.

The CACEIS group combines the expertise and efficiency of world-class trading operation with integrated services and financial stability of large, multinational asset servicing group. We believe we are on the right track to achieve our ambition of becoming the European leader in asset servicing by 2030 and are determined that our group will play a growing role in global asset servicing industry as we pursue our business development strategy.

This article has been originally published on sff-camara website

In line with the international expansion of its asset servicing business, CACEIS is extending its securities finance coverage into new financial centres and to a wider community of lenders and borrowers. Donia Rouigueb, CACEIS’ head of sales, securities finance and repo, speaks to Bob Currie about market dynamics, growth strategy and how recent acquisitions will turbocharge its offer.

CACEIS has undergone a significant transformation since its creation in 2005 from the merger of Credit Agricole and Caisse d’Epargne. Since then, it has built on its core asset servicing strength in France and Luxembourg to extend its coverage in Europe and into new parts of the world.

Retaining and adding value