Crane Data hosted its big Money Fund Symposium conference in Jersey City last week, where over 740 money market professionals discussed rates, tokenization, record asset levels and a number of other hot topics in cash. The opening session, "Keynote: Money Funds Stay Hot (& Cool) in '26," featured J.P. Morgan Asset Management's Global Head Portfolio Management Chris Tufts. Responding to the record numbers in Jersey City, Tufts says, "I think it's a reflection of just the run that our industry has had over the past five or six years in particular.... I think it just speaks to the asset gathering, the relevance of our product, and the fact that money funds have become really just the default liquidity tool for any wider array of investors over the past several years." (Note: Conference materials are available in our "Money Fund Symposium 2026 Download Center." Watch for more highlights and excerpts in coming days and in our upcoming issue of Money Fund Intelligence, and thanks again to those who supported MFS'26! See you in Philadelphia next year, June 23-25, 2027!)
He explains, "I think I'd also just add what's also new, and pretty exciting for me and probably for most of the people in the room, is that we're not really just talking about a safe corner of the market, cash management. We're really as an industry increasingly at the forefront of innovation and how cash and liquidity kind of plug into all things digital. So really this is an innovation conversation this year. That's exciting, and I'm happy to be part of that."
Describing his group, Tufts comments, "We're about $1.6 trillion in assets under supervision. We serve institutional clients and retail clients, but we're mostly an institutional shop.... Our job day in and day out, like everybody else in the room, is managing liquidity -- principal stability -- and delivering competitive returns for clients. It sounds simple, but everyone here knows it's anything but simple to make that happen day in and day out.... Even as we've become more digital as a business and more electronic, it's still a relationship business at the end of the day."
He continues, "The investment team is obviously front and center in the daily investment process, but, as everyone knows this is an operational, risk management-focused product. So when I talk about the team, I like to acknowledge that there is a lot more than just the investors and traders ... making this product happen every day. So it's a true team effort. The money fund platform specifically is about $1.3 trillion of the $1.6 trillion under supervision. It's mostly 30 or so commingled funds and vehicles across six currencies, 90% USD. US dollars still dominate ... the platform even, in spite of respectable growth in the non-USD currencies over the past couple of years."
Asked about technology and money moving, Tufts responds, "Everything is very available in terms of data points on the funds and performance. Everything has been digital for a while and is becoming more and more digital, which just removes friction in the way the cash can move around based on yield or other factors. And then I think after stress events like we saw with the regional bank crisis, I think users of money funds have ... re-evaluated what liquidity really means, what diversification means, and they've just become a lot more discerning in terms of how they think about their cash."
He states, "Obviously, yield is part of that.... Relative to bank deposits and direct market instruments, a phrase I've heard used internally is, 'cash is becoming less tolerant of complacency.' So I think that's a theme more than just chasing yield -- more active cash movement around the system and our industry is going to be with us for some time."
Tufts then comments, "With money funds, it's a game of inches in a lot of ways ... I think to the extent that you can use technology, whether it's AI or other tools to forecast liquidity more efficiently, get better execution in the market, identify issues faster, escalate them more quickly and efficiently, evaluate your counterparty usage in more real time. Those are all wins that help you deliver that extra inch or basis point over time."
He says, "We're using AI pretty extensively. I don't think AI is replacing portfolio managers and investors, but I think ... portfolio managers who use AI well will probably replace portfolio managers that don't use AI or don't use it well. So this is something that we need to integrate into our processes and into the way we manage funds.... It's really efficient, in terms of looking at ... issue escalation, catching anomalies in our trading activity or data or allocations, and doing day-to-day analysis on what's changed."
When asked about tokenization, Tufts responds, "It seems like this year at your Symposium, we're talking more about innovation and creative projects like tokenization and digital initiatives, and it's refreshing to be spending more time on that. Obviously, the last number of years, really, since the GFC, we've been occupied with significant regulatory change and reforms. A lot of that certainly was necessary, and I think it's made us a lot more resilient as an industry through crisis events. But it certainly is refreshing to be able to focus on the next leg of evolution of our product."
He explains, "In terms of the products that we've launched, the tokenized funds that we've launched, they really look and feel from a portfolio management perspective just like any other short Treasury and Repo product that we run in the standard money fund format. So, it really hasn't changed my experience as an investor. The fact that they're tokenized ... is more of a client experience, product development, an operational exercise at this point. But I do think ... it's a natural fit in this discussion for our product. [We've] focused on liquidity, yield, stability, and putting that into a digital format is a natural next step, just adding more flexibility around settlement, portability of the funds, collateral, efficiencies, etc."
Tufts continues, "The challenging part is just making sure the governance and control ... moves at the same speed as the evolution and those other elements. For me as a portfolio manager, I think about the ... cash flow aspects and any sort of flow dynamics around the tokenized product, and how that might look and feel a bit different than traditional mutual fund wrappers.... It could speed up a lot of things. With that said, if there is kind of peer-to-peer transferability in tokenized products, that actually could dampen cash flow volatility for the funds that we manage."
He says, "We've launched a private offshore tokenized fund that's run in kind of a Genius Act sort of set guidelines. We also have a true Genius Act compliant 2a-7 tokenized fund that we launched more recently that's actually had some decent asset gathering success already. But ... I view these more as, for the time being anyway, kind of placeholder products. We need to kind of get our foot in the space."
Tufts states, "We need to be present and ... not only educate ourselves on how these products work and how to make them more efficient and [to] make the governance as tight as we can. But also it's a process educating clients on these new arenas and formats.... We don't see a significant asset gathering opportunity in tokenized products near term or even [in the] ETFs that we've gotten involved with in the money fund space. But we need to be present, we need to be ready for ... when that tide starts to turn."
Discussing online money fund portals, Tufts comments, "Morgan Money is a key initiative internally. We're just looking to offer an open architecture platform that makes ... yield and sort of liquidity options just fully transparent [and] makes cash movement and the client experience as frictionless as possible. But to do it in a controlled way where you have very robust limits, audit trails, etc. I think any of the good platforms like Morgan Money will offer that as well. Then to get back to the cash sorting or cash stacking discussion, the portals help clients segment their cash and their liquidity a bit more intentionally. And we do that in Morgan Money through kind cash optimization techniques and offerings [within the portal]."
He tells the MFS, "So I think it's just making sure the cash lands in the right place and stays there until that cash is purposed or liquidity changes and, you know, that's good for us. It ensures that the right liquidity lands in the right fund and it's good for clients in terms of optimizing their return on investment. So I think the portals have been a good development in terms of just helping cash find the right home over time."
Asked about the investor base, Tufts says, "We have retail offerings in the prime funds and certainly retail assets in our government funds. But we are mostly an institutional manager kind of by virtue of our ties to the bank. For me personally, I think the client relationship aspect of my role or my team's role is one of the things that keeps it fresh and engaging. I love talking to the end investor. You're hearing about their businesses, their cash needs, how they think about liquidity, what they're worried about in terms of market backdrop and what's happening in the funds. That is, I think, critical to [our] understand day in and day out. We also spend a lot of time analyzing and kind of stripping down the liability side of our portfolios."
He adds, "Obviously, managing assets is critical, but I think it's equally, if not more important, to understand the liability side of the funds -- investor concentrations, cash flow behaviors -- and we have a whole process around that. We use some technology and AI style tools to help understand that data. We try to leverage best practices from the bank in terms of thinking about the way they manage their liability look in deposits. It's very fundamental to kind of the process in terms of how we assemble the funds and think about liquidity management, especially in times of volatility, trying to understand that liability profile of the funds is critical, and especially the prime stock funds that own credit."
Finally, Tufts tells us, "Money funds are popular because they're built for the unexpected. We're built for volatility, and preservation of capital is central to what we do. I think there's a lot of unknowns out in the market at the moment. So I think that is a tailwind for our product and just speaks to kind of the ongoing relevance of what we all do. Secondly, I think the AI and digital revolution, it's worth celebrating. I think it's going to improve resiliency, transparency, and the way the product is utilized by a broader set of investors. I think we need to embrace that innovation."
