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Singapore’s fund distribution market is seeing tokenisation discussed as an emerging product feature, but distributors still report that mainstream demand is concentrated in simpler, outcome-oriented exposures, according to a Finance Magnates report that cites Crisil Coalition Greenwich’s 2025 Asia Intermediary Distributors Study. In the survey results referenced by the report, “product innovation” was ranked behind factors such as performance, investment capability and fund size in how intermediaries select products for clients.
The same report links distributor preferences to continued client demand for income and liquid, transparent instruments, while noting strong 2025 ETF inflows on SGX and a pickup in REIT ETF interest in the second half of the year. The Straits Times, citing SGX figures, reported REIT ETFs drew S$557 million of net inflows in 2025 and lifted assets under management to about S$1.7 billion, underscoring that listed real-estate exposure remains a mainstream access point relative to more complex structures.
Tokenisation enters the Singapore discussion primarily through fund “unit” design and distribution rails rather than a single real-estate tokenisation transaction. Finance Magnates quotes BNP Paribas executive Elaine Tan describing tokenisation tied to money market funds and digital units on permissioned blockchains, and Calastone’s Asia head Justin Christopher on the use of tokenised fund distribution to widen access to private-market fund products, framing tokenisation as an infrastructure layer that can sit alongside traditional fund wrappers.
This comes against an evolving regulatory backdrop in Singapore for broader investor access to private markets. MAS proposed a Long-Term Investment Fund (LIF) framework in 2025 aimed at enabling retail participation in private-market investment funds, a category that can include real estate strategies depending on fund design and mandate, and Reuters noted the proposal could create a pathway for potential listing of private-market funds.
On tokenised capital-markets infrastructure specifically, MAS has signaled policy work that would shape how tokenised instruments are issued and distributed, including planned trials for tokenised MAS bills and a forthcoming regulatory guide for tokenised capital markets products, according to Reuters reporting from the Singapore FinTech Festival in late 2025. Separately, market infrastructure examples cited in public reporting show how tokenised fund units may be operationalised: Reuters reported DBS’s collaboration with Franklin Templeton and Ripple to support trading and lending services using tokenised money market funds for accredited and institutional investors, including the sgBENJI token and RLUSD stablecoin on DBS Digital Exchange.
For issuers, distributors and platform operators, the immediate impact is mainly informational rather than a change in rules: the evidence cited in the distributor study and Singapore market commentary indicates that tokenisation features are being evaluated alongside conventional selection criteria, while regulated access pathways and settlement rails continue to develop. Asset managers considering tokenised real-estate or real-estate-linked funds in Singapore will be affected by how MAS finalises private-market access frameworks and tokenised capital-markets guidance, while investors are most directly affected where tokenised units are offered within existing suitability and eligibility constraints.
