Shinhan Asset Management, one of South Korea's largest asset managers, has partnered with Plume to build a tokenized fund using ultra-short-term Korean won bonds, according to an announcement in early August. The pilot represents the first major South Korean asset manager to test on-chain bond tokenization at scale.
Tokenized securities allow traditional financial assets to settle and trade on blockchain networks, cutting settlement time from days to minutes and removing intermediaries. Shinhan chose to work with Plume, an Ethereum layer-2 blockchain designed for regulated financial applications.
Shinhan Asset Management manages over 100 trillion won in assets. In 2024 and 2025, Korean banks and brokerages launched crypto custody pilots and stablecoin experiments, though adoption remained limited by regulatory uncertainty and technical friction.
Plume positions itself as a blockchain designed for securities and derivatives, with features aimed at institutional settlement: fast finality, confidential transactions, and integration with existing financial rails. The network launched mainnet in 2024 and has attracted other financial service providers testing tokenized products.
The Shinhan-Plume partnership uses ultra-short-term bonds denominated in Korean won, instruments with maturities under one year. This choice reduces exposure to price volatility while allowing the pilot to test daily settlement and custody mechanics on-chain. No fund size or timeline for broader rollout was disclosed.
South Korea's Financial Services Commission has permitted tokenized securities within a regulated sandbox, though a permanent framework remains under development. The regulator has required institutions to complete compliance testing before moving pilots into live trading, slowing adoption despite strong interest from the country's largest financial houses.
Shinhan's pilot brings institutional demand for tokenized bonds to a blockchain designed to support it, though the absence of a disclosed fund size or public timeline indicates the test remains early-stage. The number to watch is whether Shinhan expands the pilot to multiple asset classes or increases fund size.
