The class groups templates by economic category, and each template specifies a product and its compliance configuration.
An asset class is a named economic category, such as Fixed income or Funds, that groups instrument templates for the catalogue and for exposure reports. It sets no token behaviour and no compliance rule.
Nine classes ship with the platform. You can add your own and hide any class you do not use.
Delete is not blocked while templates still use a class. Hide instead, or move the templates first.
The class names exposure, the template configures the product
An asset class answers one question about an instrument: what kind of economic exposure it represents. The instrument template beneath it answers a different one: how one product is configured. The platform keeps the two apart, so changing one product's configuration leaves the class it reports under untouched. Changing the class itself, by a rename or by reclassifying a template, relabels every instrument beneath it at once.
That separation is what keeps a growing catalogue legible. Debt product templates can sit in a fixed-income class while carrying different dates, cash-flow features and compliance frameworks. A new product joins an existing class instead of forcing a new category, and exposure reports keep comparing like with like as the catalogue grows.
The class label follows issued assets into portfolio breakdowns and catalogue navigation. A report can move from a class-level view to the templates and instruments beneath it without losing the common grouping, which is what makes exposure comparable across products that share nothing else.
Shipped classes and custom classes
Nine asset classes ship with the platform and are visible to every organisation: Fixed income, Cash, Real assets, Equity, Funds, Structured, Digital assets, Derivatives, and Yield instruments. They cover the economic categories the shipped instrument templates are built around.
Add a custom class when the shipped categories do not meet your reporting needs. A class has a name and a slug, the lower-case key the platform derives from the name. Review the name and scope before assigning templates, because the class label appears in portfolio views for their issued instruments. The platform refuses a name whose slug matches a shipped class. It also refuses a name with a letter or digit from another script, because that name forms no slug. A custom class therefore never shares a slug with a shipped one.
If your organisation created a custom class before the platform shipped a class with the same slug, the upgrade resolves the clash. When every template in your class uses a base asset type the shipped class allows, the shipped class adopts its templates and template structures, and your class is removed, so its identifier no longer resolves. Otherwise the class keeps its name, identifier, templates and issued instruments, and moves to a new slug: the old slug, a hyphen, and the first eight letters and digits of its identifier in lowercase. Filters, links and reports keyed on the old slug stop matching that class after the upgrade.
A Permission manager, System manager, or Asset designer adds, edits, hides, or deletes a class. An Asset manager can read the catalogue through the API but not change it. Other roles cannot read it, and the Console screen opens only for the three managing roles. The Asset classes screen covers the full workflow: where the screen lives and which badge marks a System row against a Custom one. It also covers why Hide sits next to every row while Edit and Delete appear only on the rows you created.
Hide first, delete last
Hide, Rename and Delete differ in how far they reach through templates and issued instruments, and in whether you can take them back. Hide touches nothing and reverses in one click. Delete reaches everything beneath the class.
Hide takes a class out of circulation without touching a single template or issued instrument. It is scoped to your organisation and reverses in one click. It also works on the nine shipped classes, which Delete does not.
Hide reverses in a click, but Delete does not once templates already point at the class.
If you do need a class gone instead of hidden, move first: point every template that uses it at another class, then delete. The delete confirmation does not list the templates that still use the class, and neither does the Asset classes screen. The instrument template list in the Console filters by class, and that filter matches each template's stored copy of the class slug, which a rename of the class keeps current. Filter by the class before you delete to find every template you still need to move.
Where the classification is recorded
An asset class is an off-chain catalogue record: an identifier, a name, a description, a slug, an owner and a system flag. An instrument template stores the class identifier plus a copy of the slug, taken when the template was created or last reclassified and refreshed whenever the class is renamed. A later class rename or deletion does not update an exported report, and a deletion leaves the template's stored slug as it was.
The classification is single-valued and it lives on the template: one template belongs to one asset class, and an issued asset takes its class from the template it was created from instead of storing its own. The identifier preserves the relationship. The slug supports filtering, navigation and reporting. That is what makes a rename reach backwards through the catalogue and a delete reach with it.
Hiding writes a record for your organisation only, so the shared definition and what everyone else sees never change.
Visibility is organisation-scoped, and hiding is recorded separately from the class itself. System definitions have no organisation owner and are visible by default. Hiding one writes a record against your organisation instead of changing the shared definition, which is why your choice never reaches another organisation. Custom definitions carry the organisation's identifier, and the API resolves only classes that are shared or owned by the requesting organisation.
Compliance sits in a separate record. A template can reference one Compliance Template, which defines the checks and modules applied when an asset is created, so a regulatory regime never replaces the economic class. Reporting can aggregate instruments by class while compliance evidence follows the actual rules selected for the template and issued asset.
What the API exposes
Integrations manage asset classes through the platform-settings endpoints in the version 2 API, which list, read, create, update and delete definitions. List responses support pagination, sorting, search, facets and a visibility filter. Reads return the shared system classes plus the classes the calling organisation owns, and nothing owned by anyone else.
Two rules keep an integration working across a rename.
Key on the identifier, never on the slug. The slug is the grouping key current navigation and reporting paths use, and it is rebuilt from the name whenever the Console saves a class, so it moves when a name moves. The identifier does not.
Treat a slug as unique within what your organisation can read. A shipped class's slug belongs to that class alone, and your organisation's own classes are unique within your organisation. The platform refuses a create or rename whose slug matches a shipped class or another class your organisation owns. It answers HTTP 409 with DALP-0463, a caller error that is not retryable. Choose a different name. The refused request changes nothing: the class that holds the slug keeps its name and description. Two names that differ only in case or spacing, such as “Trade Finance” and “trade finance”, derive the same slug, so the second create is refused. Another organisation may hold a custom class with the same slug as one of yours, and your reads never return it.
Create and update requests carry the class name, description and slug. If a create request omits the slug, the platform derives one from the name in kebab-case. The service rejects an instrument template whose class identifier is neither a shared system class nor a class owned by the caller's organisation.
Read the instrument template's compliance-template link and configuration to assess compliance. The class slug describes economic classification.
What a class does not enforce
An asset class supports compliance work by making populations easier to define and review, but it does not enforce investor or transfer rules. The class answers which economic group an instrument belongs to. The linked Compliance Template answers which controls apply when an asset is created.
This separation lets compliance teams compare instruments by economic exposure without assuming that all products in a class share one regulatory treatment. Two templates in the same class can select different compliance frameworks. One compliance framework can be used across economic classes when its rules fit.
For audit and reporting, use the class as a grouping dimension and the actual template and issued-asset configuration as control evidence. A report can show exposure by class, then identify the compliance framework attached to each product. The class label alone cannot prove that a transfer check ran, what it blocked or what evidence it left.
One consequence follows from the class being read live instead of copied. A portfolio breakdown you exported last quarter can disagree with the same breakdown run today because someone renamed a class in between, with no change to a single instrument. Where a report has to be reproducible, store the class identifier alongside the label you printed.
Frequently asked questions
Can I change the class an instrument belongs to after it is issued?
Not one instrument at a time. Classification lives on the template, so reclassifying the template moves every instrument issued from it in the same moment, and there is no per-instrument override. A holding's class resolves through its template alone. The template also stores a fresh copy of the class slug when it is reclassified, so its stored grouping key follows the move.
If I delete a class and recreate it with the same name, do the links come back?
No. A new class receives a new identifier even when its name and slug match the deleted one, so the platform treats the two as unrelated. Re-point each affected template at the new class to restore the grouping. Instruments issued from those templates then report it again through the template.
Why does an externally registered token show no asset class?
It never came from an instrument template, and the platform finds a token's class only through its template. A token issued outside the template flow therefore has no class.
Is the asset class recorded on chain?
No. The platform stores the class off chain and resolves it live whenever a report runs. Adding, renaming, hiding or deleting a class needs no transaction and touches no contract. The asset classification claim that the platform adds to some tokens' identity at creation is a different record: it holds the instrument's own type, class and category, such as an equity class, and never the asset class. On-chain enforcement, who may hold an asset and what may transfer, comes from the compliance configuration, never from the class.