Chetan Karkhanis heads up venture investments in Asia Pacific at Franklin Templeton. He is in charge of making corporate ventures into promising fintech and wealthtech companies that can add value to Franklin Templeton’s asset-management business, from data analytics to AI to blockchain. Chetan speaks with DigFin‘s Jame DiBiasio about how he sees fintech continuing to offer opportunities to asset managers, as well as areas where it poses a disruptive challenge. He talks about lessons learned from investments into startups, including when they don’t work out. And he provides a window onto how AI and blockchain might shape the industry, from operations and IT to distribution and even to how investment teams create their portfolios. Timecodes: 0:00 – Chetan Karkhanis, Franklin Templeton 01:48 – How fintech is shaping the asset-management industry, and lessons from the firm’s various investments into Asia wealthtech companies in “web2” 7:19 – How Franklin Templeton decides when and how to integrate a technology or a startup into the firm 8:31 – Are fintechs disrupting asset managers, or is fintech just a new set of service providers? 11:12 – What happens when a fintech investment fails, and what does that tell us about what works and doesn’t in Asia wealthtech 13:54 – Crypto, tokenization, DLT, Bitcoin ETFs, and how they fit into legacy businesses 18:08 – Looking ahead, how might blockchain transform asset management 20:43 – Prospects in Asia for separately managed accounts 24:06 – How Chetan thinks about tokenization in the payments space from an asset manager’s perspective 26:26 – Tech’s impact on the front office and how investment teams are using data and AI 30:48 – RoIs or other ways to measure a technology’s relevance 32:04 – The obligatory question about generative AI