Bank of Montreal Hires Leader for the Canadian Bank's Digital Assets, Tokenization Push

By Robb M. Stewart

Bank of Montreal has appointed Imran Ibrahim to a newly created role leading the big Canadian bank's digital assets and tokenization strategy.

Ibrahim's work heading up the department will focus on bringing what the bank says are the efficiency and flexibility of digital assets to bank deposits, while maintaining trust, security and regulatory foundations.

The hiring builds on Bank of Montreal's push into digital assets, including a move in March to launch tokenized cash capabilities that will allow institutional clients to move funds securely at all times.

Ibrahim will lead the bank's strategy and be responsible for advancing how these new technologies, particularly tokenization, can be applied to bank deposits. His appointment adds momentum to the bank's efforts to strengthen digital capabilities across North America, Derek Vernon, head of North American treasury and payment solutions at Bank of Montreal, said in a memo introducing Ibrahim as part of his leadership team.

"As clients continue to adapt toward always-on, real-time financial ecosystems, digital assets and tokenization are becoming increasingly central to how businesses move, manage and optimize their money," Vernon said.

Ibrahim for more than five years had been executive director of cross-border payments and new initiatives at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce's capital markets arm. Previously, he was director of CIBC Capital Markets' alternative solutions segment, and before that he has held roles at MasterCard and Rogers Communications.

Bank of Montreal, one of a handful of big lenders that together control most of Canada's banking assets, in March said it would offer 24/7 tokenized cash services using derivatives marketplace CME Group's network on Google Cloud Universal Ledger in an effort to create a bank-anchored framework that would enable clients to convert dollars into a tokenized instrument for use with margined products at CME.

There is a building push into tokenization, the process of converting real-world assets into digital tokens on a blockchain.

Canadian regulators in March approved an experimental research project by a consortium that included the Bank of Canada and lenders Royal Bank of and Toronto-Dominion Bank to use distributed ledger technology to support end-to-end transactions in the bond market. In the test, Export Development Canada, the country's export credit agency, issued Canada's first tokenized bond on a platform that enables instant settlement as well as secondary market trading.

Write to Robb M. Stewart at robb.stewart@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 12, 2026 09:44 ET (13:44 GMT)