Building on its established Distributed Ledger Repo (DLR) capability for collateral mobility and securities financing, Broadridge Financial Solutions has launched DLX, an integrated, end-to-end tokenisation and digital asset infrastructure platform for financial institutions.
DLR, which recently broadened its support for different assets, processes more than $350 billion in daily activity across thousands of transactions. DLX substantially extends its capabilities and functionality to offer a multi-asset platform for issuance, trading, settlement, servicing, custody, governance and distribution.DLX supports the full lifecycle of tokenised assets through a modular, multi-chain architecture enabling participants to issue and distribute their own tokens and participate in markets for tokens issued by others. For example:
- Issuers can mint, issue, service, transact in, and distribute tokenised financial instruments;
- Banks and broker-dealers can connect issuance, trading, transaction orchestration, settlement, servicing, custody, and market infrastructure workflows;
- Asset managers can tokenise and issue funds and investment products on chain, automate lifecycle processes, and connect with institutional, intermediary, and wealth management distribution channels;
- Institutional investors can access and transact in eligible tokenised products, including tokenised funds, equities, fixed income instruments, and other financial assets;
Wealth management firms can integrate access to eligible tokenised products and on-chain market capabilities into existing advisory, platform, and client service models.
By connecting issuers, investors, intermediaries, asset managers and wealth distribution channels through a common platform, DLX is designed to reduce fragmentation across the tokenised asset lifecycle and expand access to new distribution models.
“Tokenisation is increasingly becoming the foundation of more programmable, connected and always-on financial markets,” says Horacio Barakat, Global Head of Digital Innovation at Broadridge. “DLX gives market participants an accelerated pathway to operating on chain without sacrificing the controls, connectivity and operating models they rely on today.”
The technology heart of DLX is its orchestration layer that brings together tokenisation, smart contract services, trading and execution workflows, settlement, books and records, custody, wallet infrastructure and connectivity across digital asset markets, payment rails, compliance providers, custodians and distribution channels. This allows firms to integrate tokenised asset activity into existing operating models without having to manage the complexity of fragmented on-chain infrastructure themselves.
The orchestration layer acts as an institutional translation engine and traffic controller. It is the software module that allows a financial institution to perform complex, multi-chain digital asset activities using their existing internal workflows.
Instead of forcing a bank or asset manager to interact directly with the highly technical “plumbing” of various blockchains, the orchestration layer unifies everything into a single operational interface. It handles five specific functions simultaneously:
1. Two-Way Book Synching (On Chain to TradFi)
The biggest barrier to institutional blockchain adoption is that traditional databases (legacy books and records) do not automatically talk to distributed ledgers.
In more detail: When an event happens on chain, such as a tokenised corporate bond paying out a coupon, the DLX orchestration layer intercepts that on-chain event. It instantly translates the smart contract data into a format that legacy accounting, tax and clearing systems can understand and process without manual human intervention.
2. Multi-Wallet and Custody Interoperability
Institutions use highly varied custody models. Some use self-custody wallets, others use third-party and many use hybrid models.
In more detail: The orchestration layer abstracts the wallet layer entirely. It acts as a routing network, meaning a portfolio manager can initiate a trade on the DLX front end, and the orchestration layer handles the back-end complexity of signing the transaction, communicating with the designated custodian, and releasing the tokens regardless of how those assets are secured.
3. Execution and Lifecycle Automation
Digital assets are not static; they have lifecycles (issuances, trades, corporate actions, settlements, and compliance checks).
In more detail: The orchestration layer acts as a macro-workflow engine. If an asset manager is tokenising a fund, the orchestration layer strings together the individual microservices: it triggers token creation, checks it against compliance providers, hooks into payment rails for payment settlement, and manages delivery-versus-payment (DvP) rails all in a single automated pipeline.
4. Cross-Network Connectivity (Abstractions)
Different financial platforms sit on different blockchains. For example, the DTCC Tokenisation Service uses the Canton Network, while other private markets might operate on private Ethereum variants (such as Hyperledger Besu) or R3’s Corda.
In more detail: The orchestration layer prevents an institution from needing a separate technical team for every blockchain network. It provides a single universal API layer. When a user executes an action on DLX, the orchestration layer routes the instruction to the correct network, translating the business logic into the specific smart contract language required by that specific underlying ledger.
5. Seamless On-Chain Governance
When equities, funds, or fixed-income assets are tokenised, investors still retain legal voting and proxy rights.
In more detail: Because Broadridge manages the proxy voting infrastructure for most of Wall Street, the DLX orchestration layer actively pipes token data straight into their institutional proxy mechanics. It matches token ownership balances on chain to official voting distribution channels, allowing investors to exercise governance and receive disclosures natively through their existing traditional client dashboards.
As well as its rich functionality. operationally, DLX connects with two emerging tokenisation infrastructure anchors that could propel it into mainstream adoption: Digital Asset’s Canton Network and the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) leveraging the DTCC Tokenisation Service.
The combination of DLX, the DTCC Tokenisation Service, and Canton forms a potentially powerful institutional digital asset ecosystem. While it has some ways to go, it represents a path to take tokenisation away from POCS and pilots towards a production-ready, trillion-dollar institutional market mesh.
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