Can Swiss mortgages be brought on-chain – and what would such a model look like in practice?
The SFTI Mortgage Token Working Group has concluded its work, with the results now published in a dedicated chapter of the IFZ Crypto Assets Study 2026.
Given the scale of the Swiss mortgage market – with approximately CHF 1.25 trillion in outstanding mortgage loans held by Swiss banks – tokenization could open up new possibilities for how mortgage-linked exposures are funded, distributed and serviced.
The chapter explores the feasibility of mortgage tokenization across social, economic, legal & regulatory, tax and technological dimensions. Among other things, the analysis highlights an important legal distinction: under current Swiss law, a mortgage itself cannot simply be tokenized and transferred on-chain. Instead, the study explores a structure in which mortgage-related rights are mirrored through a token issued by a Swiss-domiciled special purpose vehicle (SPV).
To bring the concept to life, the Working Group also developed a simplified working prototype, demonstrating how the traditional mortgage process could be connected to an on-chain investor layer.
The findings show that mortgage tokenization is technically feasible at prototype level – while moving towards a production-ready solution would require further work across governance, regulation, taxation, custody, interoperability, cybersecurity and market liquidity.
Discover the findings, proposed architecture and prototype in Chapter 5: Mortgage Tokenization (pp. 56–72) of the IFZ Crypto Assets Study 2026.
A special thank you to the team of Thomas Ankenbrand from the Institute of Financial Services Zug IFZ, who led the SFTI Mortgage Token Working Group, and to all Working Group members and contributors for their valuable expertise, commitment and collaboration throughout the project.