Prometheum and Federated Hermes (NYSE: FHI) have recently formed a partnership aimed at bringing tokenized fund shares into the regulated US brokerage system that serves most American investors.
Announced on October 13, 2026, the collaboration pairs Federated Hermes, the active asset manager overseeing roughly $912 billion in assets as of mid-2026, with Prometheum’s network of SEC-registered, FINRA-member broker-dealers.
The firms expect their first product to reach the market in the first quarter of 2027, with money market or other liquidity-oriented funds the most probable starting point given Federated Hermes’ longstanding strength in that segment.
Under the arrangement, Federated Hermes supplies the investment-management expertise and the tokenized products themselves.
Unlike several of its earlier on-chain efforts, in which third parties created digital representations of existing shares, the Pittsburgh-based firm intends to issue the digital securities directly.
Prometheum’s infrastructure handles the securities plumbing: subsidiary ProFinancial supports distribution, while Prometheum Capital provides custody, clearing, and settlement for its customers and makes the products available to introducing broker-dealers through its correspondent-clearing platform.
The stated objective is to place these blockchain-based shares inside the familiar accounts and adviser relationships that most US households already use, rather than confining them to crypto-native platforms.
Aaron Kaplan, Prometheum’s founder and co-CEO, described the partnership as a potential blueprint for the broader industry.
He noted that tokenized funds have so far been issued largely outside the mainstream brokerage channels where the bulk of American investors hold assets.
By combining an established asset manager with registered broker dealers offering distribution, custody, and clearing, the firms hope to create a repeatable path for digital securities.
Kevin Barr, Federated Hermes’ director of digital assets (who joined the firm in May 2026 after more than a decade leading related work at BNY), framed the move as a logical extension of client demand.
Broker dealers and registered investment advisers, he said, increasingly seek on-chain access to traditional investments while expecting the same fiduciary standards and operational rigor that apply to the firm’s conventional fund lineup.
The announcement arrives amid a rapid expansion of tokenized cash and fund products.
BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, launched in 2024, has grown into a multi-billion-dollar vehicle; in August 2026 the firm added tokenized share classes to a large suite of European money-market funds via JPMorgan’s Kinexys platform and introduced new U.S. products (BSTBL and BRSRV) designed in part for stablecoin-reserve eligibility under the GENIUS Act.
Franklin Templeton, which pioneered an on-chain US government money-market fund in 2021, expanded further in 2026 by working with Ondo Finance to tokenize several equity and gold ETFs and by exploring regulatory relief that could allow tokenized fund shares to trade against other digital assets.
JPMorgan itself launched the publicly accessible JLTXX tokenized government money-market fund on Ethereum earlier in 2026.
Industry data cited by Prometheum indicate that more than $14 billion in tokenized US Treasury and money-market products already exist on-chain, yet almost none of that volume is reachable through ordinary brokerage accounts.
Federated Hermes has participated in some of these earlier experiments—through the BNY-Goldman Sachs institutional platform, overseas channels such as Archax and Conduit, and a conventional fund launched in June 2026 for stablecoin reserves—but those arrangements left token creation to third parties.
The Prometheum partnership shifts the firm into the role of direct issuer while embedding the products inside regulated US securities intermediaries.
That combination addresses a persistent distribution bottleneck: abundant on-chain issuance has outpaced the ability of most investors to buy, hold, and transfer the tokens through the accounts they already maintain.
If the model functions as intended, it could accelerate the migration of everyday cash-management and investment products onto blockchain rails without requiring clients or advisers to leave familiar platforms.
Faster settlement, automated record-keeping, and potential new uses for tokenized shares (for example, as collateral) become more practical once they sit inside the existing brokerage and clearing infrastructure.
At the same time, the partnership underscores that regulatory compliance and established distribution channels remain central to scaling digital securities beyond specialized crypto venues.
With the first product still months away and key details such as the specific fund and blockchain still undisclosed, the announcement is more a structural step than an immediate market event—yet it illustrates how large traditional managers are beginning to treat tokenized shares as ordinary securities that can be issued and distributed through the regulated system most investors already trust.