HONG KONG: Asian financial regulators should do more to support large-scale trials of "tokenised securities", an industry body said on Thursday, since banks and technology firms' current experiments are stuck in different silos, hindering the pace of change.

Tokenised securities are products like shares and bonds whose proof of ownership is recorded on a distributed ledger, the technology that underpins other digital tokens such as bitcoin. Many banks are exploring the concept, hoping it will help them price and settle transactions more efficiently. But trials so far involve "three or four firms working together on proofs of concept which are not interoperable", said Laurence Van der Loo, executive director for technology and operations at financial industry body the Asia Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (ASIFMA).