The next wave of capital markets innovation won’t be driven by trading desks or hedge funds, it will be shaped by how ordinary investors access private markets. For Peter Hughes, CEO of Apex Group, tokenisation is the key to unlocking that future.
“The real end-use case is taking private markets into the wealth, retirement and retail channels in DeFi format,” Hughes says. “You don’t need to have five million dollars and have it locked up for seven or eight years. You can put in ten thousand dollars, get the same return profile and get your cash out tomorrow.”
He envisions a future where diversified, tokenised portfolios are held in digital wallets. “Your retirement security changes. If the stock market goes down 10%, you don’t care because you’ve got a really diversified portfolio that’s uncorrelated to the stock market.”
For this future to become a reality, Hughes notes it’s important for investors understand the distinction between infrastructure and investment. “Digital assets is the infrastructure and what institutions should be using. Crypto is what we retail guys might invest into. But people are very bad at delineating between that.”
This digital asset infrastructure is key to reducing the friction in the capital market system, making it quicker and simpler to settle securities,” says Hughes, adding that “banks are reducing their costs by 60% roughly in a DeFi format versus a TradFi format”.
Momentum is building, Hughes says, pointing to moves by BlackRock and DTCC to embrace a blockchain-based trading and investment landscape, with mass adoption five years away, he predicts.
The future is tokenised
Apex has long serviced institutional crypto funds, but its deeper move into digital infrastructure began around four to five years ago as Hughes saw a flicker of change in the mainstream investment market.
“Firms like BlackRock were investing into crypto and putting it into portfolios. That was an inflection point for me where I said, okay, this is going to become relevant because large institutions are actually looking at it seriously.”
Since then, Apex has built a robust tech stack to support tokenisation. Its acquisition of Tokeny, a platform focused on public chain infrastructure, in May, was a key milestone and “interlinks” the Apex ecosystem, says Hughes.
“It means we can collect all the tech to be able to deliver a tokenised money market fund all by ourselves, or a stablecoin all by ourselves and our tech,” he adds. “You combine global scale, regulatory licences, tech capabilities, then we have a really strong role to play in the industry.”
Same role; different job
Apex’s role is to help large asset managers reformat their funds and securities. “That’s really where we think our piece in the ecosystem sits,” and the company’s global footprint is central to its strategy. “If you can scale it globally and add that value, then that’s how you get the multiplier effect.”
Over the past decade, the group’s evolution from a mid-sized fund services firm to a global financial infrastructure provider has been marked by bold moves and strategic foresight. Now operating in 52 countries with over 13,000 employees, the firm is pushing into digital assets with conviction, and Hughes believes tokenisation will reshape investor access and retirement security.
Apex is also actively pursuing regulatory approvals to enable on-chain transfer agency services. “We’re applying to 24 different regulators to do that DeFi transfer agency piece on chain,” says Hughes. “We’ve got 15 approved and nine in the works across all the major fund hubs.”
The company’s M&A strategy has been instrumental. “Some of these businesses we’ve bought have been bootstrapped a little bit to get to where they have. To take them through the next phases of their value add, we need to put a fast-moving, scalable tech group behind them, including our AI division.”
With Apex’s infrastructure, regulatory reach and tech stack already in place, Hughes is confident the firm is ready to lead. “We’ve got the full toolkit now for both the TradFi world and the DeFi world and be that bridge in between.”
