Neuberger Berman and Securitize launched a jointly branded tokenized fund on August 18, 2026, bringing exposure to US high-yield corporate bonds and leveraged loans onto Ethereum, Avalanche, Solana, and Sui. The fund, called the Neuberger Securitize High Income Tokenized Fund Ltd. and listed under the ticker HINC, is domiciled in the British Virgin Islands and structured to let qualified investors use their token holdings as collateral within Aave's institutional lending market. HINC is positioned as the first high-yield bond fund to join Aave Horizon's collateral assets, a distinction that marks a meaningful step for the tokenized credit market.

Securitize Capital LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser, holds the primary advisory role and legal authority over the fund; Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers LLC, also SEC-registered, serves as sub-advisor and runs the underlying credit strategy. Neuberger Berman, a private firm with roughly $613 billion in total client assets as of June 2026, brings deep fixed-income expertise to the mandate. The fund targets high-yield corporate bonds, collateralized loan obligation tranches, and leveraged bank loans. A liquidity sleeve within the portfolio holds tokenized Treasury bills and money market funds to facilitate redemptions. Settlement is T+1 on business days, with a 24-hour lock-up period on subscriptions.

The annual management fee is 0.50%, with a total expense ratio of 0.60%. The fund's illustrative annualized return of 7.21% is drawn from a 10-year blend of relevant credit indices spanning 2016 to 2026, not from actual fund performance. HINC has no operating history. The portfolio carries an effective duration of two to three years. The initial minimum subscription is $100,000; additional subscriptions require a minimum of $1,000. Prospective investors should note that the historical worst drawdown for the underlying index blend reached 13.20% in 2022, with a single-month drop of 18.25% in March 2020.

Aave Horizon Integration

A governance proposal currently before Aave asks the protocol to accept HINC as supply-only collateral on Aave Horizon, a permissioned lending market that lets institutions borrow USDC, GHO, and RLUSD against tokenized assets. As of July 2026, Horizon held approximately $539.8 million in total assets with $163.5 million actively borrowed. HINC would join existing collateral including JAAA, mGLOBAL, and VanEck's VBILL. The proposal specifies a Chainlink NAV oracle feed using the TSSO standard, with a 15% annual percentage rate growth cap built in as a risk control. Per the governance proposal, that cap is designed to limit how fast the reported net asset value can increase, reducing manipulation risk.

HINC tokens follow Securitize's DS Protocol, an extended ERC-20 standard that restricts transfers to wallet addresses that have completed identity verification. The tokens are not freely transferable. Only allowlisted, KYC-compliant wallets can hold them, which is a meaningful distinction for anyone who assumes that "onchain" means permissionless access.

Scale and Platform Context

Securitize listed on the NYSE on July 2, 2026, under the ticker SECZ. The company became the first NYSE issuer to tokenize its own equity at listing, simultaneously placing $295 million of that equity on Solana and Avalanche. Securitize reported $5.3 billion in transaction volume for the second quarter of 2026, up 147% year over year, and manages between $4.3 billion and $5.0 billion in tokenized assets across 663 active funds. Its institutional partners include BlackRock, Apollo, Hamilton Lane, KKR, and VanEck. CEO Carlos Domingo said in the Q2 earnings release that the company had "become the first tokenization company to go public."

The broader market for tokenized real-world assets, excluding stablecoins, grew from around $6 billion in early 2025 to an estimated $31 billion to $33.8 billion by mid-2026. Fixed income dominates that total, accounting for roughly 57% of tokenized value locked across asset classes.

Regional Implications

HINC's $100,000 minimum subscription is designed for institutions and high-net-worth individuals. That threshold, paired with the KYC allowlisting requirement, effectively excludes most global retail participants. For investors in South Asia, the technical pathway is real but narrow. Indian institutional investors operating through GIFT City's offshore framework could theoretically access HINC via Ethereum, though regulatory clarity on offshore tokenized securities from BVI-domiciled vehicles remains incomplete. India's 10-year government bond yield stands at approximately 7.0%, placing HINC's illustrative yield of 7.21% only marginally above the domestic benchmark. That comparison deserves careful handling: Indian government bonds carry sovereign credit risk and are domestic-currency denominated, while HINC is a high-yield corporate and CLO vehicle with a worst drawdown of 13.2% and USD-denominated foreign-currency exposure. That risk differential is material. Available source data on South Asia-specific tokenized finance activity is limited, and the analysis in this section draws on inferential reasoning from regional market context rather than directly cited figures.

In Africa, the gap between on-chain activity and institutional tokenized finance is sharper. Sub-Saharan Africa recorded $205 billion in on-chain transaction value between July 2024 and June 2025, a 52% increase year over year, driven largely by stablecoin transfers and remittances rather than structured credit products. Nigeria received $92.1 billion in crypto during 2025, ranking sixth globally per the 2025 Chainalysis Geography of Cryptocurrency report, yet most of that activity happens far below the entry point of a fund like HINC. Regulatory frameworks in South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya are advancing, but none yet provide clear rules for offshore BVI-domiciled tokenized securities. Beyond the regulatory gap, HINC is USD-denominated, meaning investors holding naira, shilling, or rand face unhedged foreign-currency exposure that adds a meaningful risk layer on top of the fund's underlying credit risk.

What Comes Next

HINC's launch extends Aave Horizon's collateral menu beyond Treasury-only products toward a fuller institutional fixed-income market, a shift with implications for the protocol's GHO stablecoin and long-term fee revenue. The fund also tests whether a multi-chain deployment across four networks attracts meaningfully broader institutional capital or simply fragments liquidity. Citi has projected tokenized securities could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030, a figure on the conservative end of the analyst range; BCG and Ripple have jointly projected tokenized assets reaching $18.9 trillion by 2033. Whether that trajectory benefits investors outside the US will depend less on the technology and more on whether minimum subscriptions fall and regulatory frameworks catch up to the infrastructure already in place. That conclusion reflects Verse Press analysis of available research and is not attributable to a single cited source.

Verse Press is seeking comment from Neuberger Berman. The Solana and Sui deployment timelines have not been independently confirmed beyond initial reporting and will be updated when Securitize provides details.