New framework delivers independent risk transparency for onchain investment vehicles, furthering S&P Global’s offerings across the DeFi space

SINGAPORE, Oct. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — S&P Global Ratings, a division of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI), today launched its Vault Risk Assessment (VRA), a new analytical approach that delivers independent, forward-looking insights into the risks associated with digital asset lending vaults. The initiative brings institutional-grade transparency to the rapidly evolving digital asset ecosystem and supports informed decision-making for market participants.

What is a vault?

Digital asset lending vaults are investment vehicles that operate on a blockchain. They pool investor deposits and deploy them according to defined strategies, working much like managed fixed income funds. Total deposits in vaults reached US$10 billion as of September 2026, demonstrating rapid growth from US$1.5 billion two years earlier. While blockchain-based activity enables point-in-time transparency, strategy and risk disclosures for vaults have typically been limited.

The VRA Analytical Approach

S&P Global Ratings’ VRA is a forward-looking opinion about the overall relative risk of impairment to an investor’s position in a lending vault. The VRA provides a comprehensive view of a vault’s overall risk profile across six key risk factors:

Portfolio credit quality risk
Liquidity mismatch risk
Curator risk
Blockchain risk
Protocol risk
Vault security and governance risk

A VRA is not a credit rating and does not comment on yield levels. To read more about the VRA analytical approach, including the letter-based scale, visit spglobal.com/ratings/en/products/vault-risk-assessments.

“As digital assets continue to institutionalize, the demand for independent risk assessments that bridge traditional finance and decentralized innovation is paramount,” said Yann Le Pallec, President, S&P Global Ratings. “Our commitment to bringing transparency and rigorous analysis to all financial markets extends to this rapidly growing segment. The Vault Risk Assessment will empower investors and foster greater confidence and stability as capital flows into these new digital structures.”

The VRA analytical approach moves beyond transaction transparency to deliver essential risk transparency, enabling institutions to enhance their investment governance and selection processes and supporting broader adoption of the vault market.

“Digital asset vaults represent a significant evolution in onchain finance, offering new avenues for pooled investment and capital efficiency,” said James Wiemken, Executive Managing Director and Head of Global Ratings Services. “However, the inherent complexities and varying disclosure standards in this nascent market create a clear need for a standardized, independent risk perspective. The VRA fills this critical gap, providing market participants with the deep insights necessary to navigate vault investments with greater clarity and confidence.”

S&P Global Ratings will publish initial Vault Risk Assessments in future announcements.

A Strategic Focus on Digital Assets

S&P Global has established itself as a bridge between traditional finance and decentralized finance, leveraging its legacy of trusted risk frameworks, benchmarks, and analytical standards to support the institutionalization of digital asset markets.

Recent firsts include:

The industry’s first Stablecoin Stability Assessments
The first credit rating of a DeFi protocol (Sky Protocol)
Its first rating of a structured finance transaction backed by bitcoin: “Ledn”.
S&P DJI and Kaiko tokenize the iBoxx U.S. Treasuries Index on the blockchain.

In September 2026, S&P Global announced an agreement to acquire OpenZeppelin, the security standard for onchain finance. Earlier the same month, S&P Global led a strategic investment in Kaiko, the independent leader in digital asset market data, indices and data infrastructure. For more information on S&P Global’s capabilities in digital assets, visit: spglobal.com/ratings/en/products/solutions/digital-assets   

Notes to Editors

What are Digital Asset Vaults? Digital asset lending vaults are investment vehicles that operate on a blockchain. They pool investor deposits and deploy them according to defined strategies, working much like managed fixed income funds.
Functionality: These strategies can be fully automated via smart contracts or managed discretionarily by human managers.
What is a smart contract? A self-executing program on a blockchain that enforces the terms of an agreement automatically, without an intermediary. In a vault, smart contracts hold the pooled capital and enforce the allocation and risk parameters the curator sets.
Ownership: Depositors receive share tokens that represent their proportional claim on the vault’s assets and any accrued returns.
Role in Finance: Vaults are designed to replicate functions typically performed by traditional financial institutions, such as money market funds, private credit funds, private equity funds, and hedge funds, but within a blockchain environment. They enable pooled investment vehicles to exist directly onchain.
Growth: The market for digital asset lending vaults, although nascent, has expanded significantly, with total deposits reaching approximately US$10 billion as of September 2026, demonstrating rapid growth from US$1.5 billion in September 2024.
S&P Global Ratings Digital Assets Primer: How Vaults Can Shape The Capital Markets Of Tomorrow (May 25, 2026)

Media Contacts

Russell Gerry, S&P Global Comms, London, russell.gerry@spglobal.com 
Jeff Sexton, S&P Global Comms, New York, jeff.sexton@spglobal.com 
Michelle Lei, S&P Global Comms, Beijing, michelle.lei@spglobal.com

About S&P Global Ratings

At S&P Global Ratings, our analyst-driven credit ratings, research, and sustainable finance opinions provide critical insights that are essential to translating complexity into clarity so market participants can unlock opportunities and make decisions with conviction. By bringing transparency to the market through high-quality independent opinions on creditworthiness, we enable growth across a wide variety of organizations, including businesses, governments, and institutions. S&P Global Ratings is a division of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI). Learn more at www.spglobal.com/ratings.
 

About S&P Global

S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI) enables businesses, governments, and individuals with trusted data, expertise and technology to make decisions with conviction. We are Advancing Essential Intelligence through world-leading benchmarks, data, and insights that customers need in order to plan confidently, act decisively and thrive in a rapidly changing global landscape.

From helping our customers assess new investments across the capital and commodities markets to navigating the energy expansion, acceleration of artificial intelligence, and evolution of public and private markets, we enable the world’s leading organizations to unlock opportunities, solve challenges and plan for tomorrow – today. Learn more at www.spglobal.com.

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SOURCE S&P Global Ratings

TOKYO, Oct. 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Bloomberg announced the first successful fully automated Japanese Government Bond (JGB) Market-on-Close trade, following the introduction of a new workflow. Aligned to BB3P (Hikene Trading), the Market-on-Close reference rate for JGBs, the automated workflow helps minimize tracking error and provides certainty of execution at a specific close time.

Available as part of Bloomberg Electronic Markets, the workflow combines the Bid/Offer List Trading functionality with Rule Builder, Bloomberg’s trade automation tool, enabling clients to define execution criteria and automate order routing based on predefined conditions within an integrated order and execution management workflow, through TSOX.

Yudhveer Chaudhry, Head of Emerging Markets, FX, Commodities & Digital Assets at BlackRock observed, “The ability to combine Market-on-Close execution with rule-based automation is a significant step forward for the JGB markets. By accelerating time to market and enabling more systematic execution at the BB3P market reference, this workflow will help minimize transaction costs, reduce manual intervention, and deliver more consistent, optimized outcomes for investors, particularly during high-volume periods. It is an exciting development for one of the highest volume bond markets in Asia, and we were pleased to collaborate with Bloomberg on introducing the protocol.”

“We continue to enhance our global Market-on-Close capabilities, bringing greater automation and efficiency to Fixed Income trading for our global clients,” said Norman Tweeboom, Japan Enterprise Sales Head at Bloomberg. “The powerful combination of Bloomberg Electronic Markets capabilities enables clients to more efficiently negotiate pricing while reducing operational complexity in a critical market.”

The JGB workflow expands Bloomberg’s Market-on-Close capabilities across global Fixed Income, which also supports U.S. Treasuries, Canadian government bonds, U.K. Gilts and European government bonds.

About Bloomberg Electronic Markets
Bloomberg’s Electronic Markets solutions are used by leading financial institutions to trade efficiently in over 175 markets around the world. More than 9,000 client firms use Bloomberg Electronic Markets to access industry-leading depth and breadth of liquidity across asset classes from over 1,500 dealers globally. Bloomberg Electronic Markets provides market participants with comprehensive solutions across the trading lifecycle, including robust price transparency, analytics, automation and execution, powered by Bloomberg’s high-quality, multi-asset class data and tools.

About Bloomberg
Bloomberg is a global leader in business and financial information, delivering trusted data, news, and insights that bring transparency, efficiency, and fairness to markets. The company helps connect influential communities across the global financial ecosystem via reliable technology solutions that enable our customers to make more informed decisions and foster better collaboration. For more information, visit Bloomberg.com/company or request a demo.

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SOURCE Bloomberg

TOKYO, Oct. 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — TIER IV, the pioneering force behind open-source software for autonomous driving, has been selected by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry for a grant program supporting collaborative technology initiatives in the Global South. Through this program, TIER IV will conduct autonomous bus field operational tests (FOTs) in Saudi Arabia. Using autonomous driving technologies with a proven track record in Japan, the company aims to help deliver safe, scalable mobility services adapted for local conditions. TIER IV will also promote talent development initiatives that contribute to the local workforce.

Background

Under the Saudi Arabian government’s Saudi Vision 2030 strategy, the country is pursuing economic diversification and social transformation with a focus on building a vibrant society, a thriving economy, and an ambitious nation. It has set a target of making 15% of public transportation autonomous by 2030. As urban development continues, there is a growing need to develop sustainable mobility solutions that improve the convenience of public transportation, enhance traffic safety, and address challenges of training skilled driving personnel.

In September 2025, TIER IV signed a memorandum of understanding with Elm, a developer of digital services and autonomous technologies. Leveraging this initiative alongside its experience and expertise in deploying autonomous buses using open-source technologies and developing talent in Japan, TIER IV will contribute to the advancement of next-generation mobility in Saudi Arabia.

Project overview

Through the following initiatives, TIER IV aims to deepen collaboration with automakers, autonomous driving technology providers and local transportation operators while establishing a business model for the future commercial operation of autonomous vehicles.

1. Vehicle integration

TIER IV will develop autonomous buses for deployment in Saudi Arabia, working with a European automaker to integrate its autonomous driving system. Autonomous vehicles developed in Japan will serve as a reference.

2. Local adaptation and FOTs

TIER IV will adapt and deploy an autonomous driving system based on open-source technologies and AI models. Training these models with local data will create an autonomous driving system tailored to local conditions, including the desert climate and right-hand traffic. FOTs will initially take place in closed environments before expanding to public roads.

3. Co-creation with local partners and talent development

TIER IV will work with local partners and transportation operators to gain insights into operational environments and regional transportation needs, while also collaborating with government authorities to share knowledge regarding local transportation challenges and requirements for deployment.

With educational institutions, the company will promote programs designed to foster talent in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics through competitive events.

Government support

To date, TIER IV has conducted autonomous driving FOTs in more than 120 regions across Japan, as well as in the United Kingdom and Australia. To further improve the performance of autonomous driving systems, however, systems must be adapted to the unique driving environments and traffic rules of each country and region. This requires substantial upfront investment for large-scale data collection, AI model training and other costs.

Deploying autonomous solutions in new markets involves uncertainties regarding demand and the establishment of viable business models. For private companies, these upfront investments can therefore represent a significant burden and entail substantial risks associated with commercialization.

Supported by this grant, TIER IV will work on establishing a high-precision autonomous driving system tailored to the local environment and advance talent development programs toward goals outlined in Saudi Vision 2030.

Future outlook

This initiative will contribute to economic development and innovation through collaboration between Japan and Saudi Arabia, with TIER IV driving the deployment of autonomous mobility solutions to help build a sustainable future for transportation.

TIER IV will apply the knowledge gained from deploying Japanese autonomous driving technologies in Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries to the development of autonomous driving technologies in Japan, contributing to further technological advancement. By fostering talent and expanding collaboration with related industries, the company also aims to contribute to the growth of Japan’s autonomous driving industry.

TIER IV will leverage these insights in vehicle development, FOTs and technology adoption across different vehicle types in other markets. Through these efforts, the company aims to further strengthen the international competitiveness of Japanese autonomous driving technology.

About TIER IV
TIER IV stands at the forefront of deep tech innovation, pioneering Autoware, open-source software for autonomous driving. With a comprehensive suite of platforms and services built around Autoware, TIER IV provides everything from software development and vehicle procurement to operational support. Through the Autoware ecosystem, TIER IV works with partners worldwide to shape the future of intelligent vehicles with open-source software, aiming to create mobility that is safer, more sustainable, and accessible to all.

Media contact
pr@tier4.jp 

The word marks and logos of TIER IV are trademarks or registered trademarks of TIER IV, Inc. in Japan and other countries. All other company names, product names, service names, and logos referenced herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Autoware is a registered trademark of the Autoware Foundation.

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SOURCE TIER IV, INC.