SEC staff grants Franklin Templeton funds relief to hold cash in BENJI
Regulation & Gov ·
The no-action letter lets registered Franklin Templeton funds park cash through the firm's onchain BENJI system without running afoul of custody rules.
The SEC's Division of Investment Management issued the letter clearing the way for Franklin Templeton's registered funds to use BENJI, the firm's blockchain-based cash management tool, according to the filing posted on sec.gov. The relief addresses how fund cash can be managed through an onchain system while staying within existing custody obligations, a question that has constrained how far regulated funds could push everyday treasury functions onto public blockchains.
BENJI is Franklin Templeton's onchain money market infrastructure, part of a broader push by the asset manager to move conventional fund operations onto public ledgers rather than private, internal systems. The staff action is notable because it applies to registered funds specifically, meaning the relief touches vehicles subject to the full weight of Investment Company Act custody requirements rather than a narrower pilot or exempt structure.
Coverage of the letter, reported by theblock.co, frames the move as a step that unblocks cash management specifically, distinct from the firm's separate work on tokenized treasuries, bitcoin-linked ETFs, and blockchain partnerships spanning Kraken, MoonPay, Avalanche, Aptos, and tZERO. Those other initiatives, tracked in an ongoing profile of the firm's crypto strategy on leviathan.news, illustrate that BENJI sits inside a wider effort by Franklin Templeton to route standard financial plumbing through public chains rather than treating blockchain as a side experiment.
Two sources have covered the development, both describing it as SEC staff-level relief rather than a formal Commission rulemaking, a distinction that matters because staff no-action letters are narrower in scope and can be revisited or withdrawn without the same process as a full rule change. Not yet detailed is which specific Franklin Templeton funds will begin using BENJI for cash management, on what timeline, or whether other asset managers might seek comparable relief for their own onchain cash tools. Whether the letter becomes a template for broader industry use of tokenized cash management, or remains a narrow accommodation tied to Franklin Templeton's particular BENJI architecture, is the open question going forward.