New York Life Investment Management announced a partnership with Centrifuge to tokenize its U.S. High Yield Corporate Bond Strategy (ticker: HYB). The fund marks NYLIM’s first tokenized offering and one of the first high-yield corporate bond strategies brought onchain. As for this, eligible investors can now access the institutional level strategy through Centrifuge’s platform, with subscriptions and redemptions settled in USDC.
What the partnership delivers
By teaming up, they’re blending Centrifuge’s blockchain tech with NYLIM’s credit expertise. The goal is to make things more efficient, transparent, and accessible, but everything behind the scenes (like the risk management and investment strategies) stays exactly the same.
Thomas Sy, Head of Multi-Asset Solutions at NYLIM, said: “Tokenization represents a compelling evolution in how investment solutions can be accessed, managed, and distributed across both public and private markets.”
Centrifuge CEO Bhaji Illuminati described New York Life as “one of the first major insurance companies to move into tokenization,” noting both parties worked closely over six months to identify opportunities and come up with this collaboration.
Tokenized RWAs: The bigger picture
The HYB launch comes as tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) surpass $30 billion onchain, per latest numbers. The next phase of adoption focuses on composability: assets that move across chains, serve as collateral, and settle intraday without dropping compliance.
Centrifuge has really carved out a spot as the go-to for Wall Street firms getting into tokenization. They have already teamed up with big names like Apollo Global Management and Janus Henderson on products like private credit funds (AAA) and high-rated Collateralized Loan Obligation (CLO) portfolios. Now, by partnering with New York Life (which manages a massive $807 billion in assets) they have just landed their biggest collaborator yet.
Composability: The real promise of tokenized funds
The HYB launch highlights a shift in how tokenized assets are being designed. Centrifuge and LayerZero are building infrastructure that allows tokenized funds to operate across multiple blockchains without losing compliance. This matters because the $30 billion tokenized RWA market remains fragmented: liquidity on Ethereum doesn’t help investors on Solana or Avalanche.
Centrifuge has already integrated with LayerZero to enable its products [including JTRSY ($861 million in Treasuries), JAAA, and SPXA] to expand across Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, BNB Chain, and Base. The goal, as commented above, is to create assets that can move across chains, serve as collateral in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and settle intraday.
As Anil Sood, CSO of Centrifuge Labs, framed it: “Tokenization becomes strategic when products are built to move beyond a single venue or chain and enter markets with real distribution from day one.”
Centrifuge also recently partnered with Coinbase, which named the firm its preferred tokenization infrastructure for Base. Above all, these moves suggest the next phase of tokenization is not just about issuance, as many could think, but about building an interoperable ecosystem where institutional assets can flow freely across DeFi.
For the Web3 audience, this means tokenized RWAs could soon become composable building blocks for a new generation of onchain financial applications.
