Asset classes
Manage the business categories that organise instrument templates and decide where issued assets appear.
Asset classes are the business categories, such as Fixed income or Cash, that organise your product catalog. This page decides which categories exist for your organisation, and every choice here reshapes what the rest of your organisation sees. The catalog you set here decides the classes offered when someone designs an instrument templateAn Instrument Template lets an issuer configure a new instrument from an approved shape, instead of re-deciding what it records, does, and permits each time.Read the concept. It also decides the groups the template catalog and the "Asset management" sidebar arrange themselves by, and the slices in the "Value by asset class" chart on Asset insights and on the "Insights" tab of Portfolio, and the rows of the "Allocation" block on the portfolio Dashboard. A class never changes how an issued token behaves. Compliance and settlement read the token's own policy and features.
Reach for this page before your organisation designs instrument templates, or when your product lineup outgrows the categories the platform ships with, for example when derivatives need their own grouping. You do not need it to issue an asset, and you do not strictly need it before designing a template either. The template wizard's classification step can create a class without leaving the wizard, for the same roles that can write here.
A class is either a system class or a custom class, and the table badges each row "System" or "Custom". System classes ship with the platform, and their names and descriptions are fixed. Six of them also pin which base instrument types their templates may use: a template under Fixed income must be built on a bond, and one under Cash must be a stablecoin or a deposit. A custom class belongs to your organisation, accepts any base instrument type unless its derived slug matches one of those six pinned classes, and can be renamed, hidden, or deleted. Every one of those changes lands in the organisation's audit trail, which records every state-changing platform call along with who made it and the role they held at the time.
Hiding is the reversible move and deleting is the permanent one: both act on where templates and their assets are offered and grouped, not on the assets themselves.
Steps
Open Asset classes
Open "Asset design" in the sidebar, then "Asset classes". The table lists visible classes sorted by name, with the "Slug", "Description", and "Source" columns beside each one; hidden classes are absent until you choose "Show hidden", which switches the table to the hidden set.
Screen equivalent: the table lists each asset class with its slug, description, and a "System" or "Custom" source badge, with an "Add asset class" button above it for roles that can manage the catalog.
Add or edit a class
Select "Add asset class", enter a name and description, and select "Create"; to change an existing custom class, open the row menu behind the three-dot button at the end of its row and select "Edit". Prefer an existing system class when your product fits one, because it carries platform-maintained naming and keeps templates on the base instrument types that match it. Create a custom class when your taxonomy differs, or when the product needs a base type its system class would refuse. The Console derives a URL-safe slug from the name, and the slug must be unique among your organisation's classes. Two names that reduce to the same slug, such as "Trade Finance" and "trade finance", collide, and the Console refuses the second with a duplicate-class message from the error catalog. A name made only of punctuation cannot be saved, because it yields no slug. Renaming a class regenerates its slug as well. That slug is what the class's template URLs point to and what the base-type pin keys on, so both move with the class immediately.
Hide or delete a class
Use "Hide" and "Make visible" in the row menu to control whether the class is offered, and "Delete" to remove a custom class after the confirmation dialog, which warns that it cannot be undone. Hide when the grouping might return or when the class is a system class, which can never be deleted: hiding is per organisation, keeps every template's assignment, and one menu choice reverses it. Delete only a custom class you are retiring for good, and reassign its templates first, because a deleted class leaves its templates without a class and out of asset issuance until someone edits each one.
Hiding or deleting a class takes effect for everyone in your organisation at once. The class disappears from the classification choices in the template wizard, and templates that belong to it drop out of the "Issue new asset" template library and the "Asset management" sidebar, because both group templates by visible class. Nothing else moves: existing templates keep their configuration. The difference between hiding and deleting is the way back. "Make visible" restores a hidden class and every grouping it carried, while a deleted class is gone permanently.
The same catalog is writable outside the Console. The asset class definition endpoints create a class, and one update call carries both its metadata and its hidden flag; deletion is its own call. The CLI commands mirror them.
Troubleshooting
There is no Add asset class button
The screen offers the catalog read only, usually with a banner that you are not authorized. Ask for the admin or system manager role in this organisation, ask for the asset designer role, or ask someone who holds one of those roles to make the change.
Creating a class is refused as a duplicate
The refusal keys on the derived slug, not the display name, so a name that differs only in case or punctuation from an existing class collides with it. Choose a name that reduces to a different slug, or reuse the existing class.
A class is missing from the table
Select "Show hidden" to check the hidden set, and confirm you are in the right organisation, because each organisation keeps its own custom classes and its own visibility choices.
Templates vanished from Issue new asset
The template library only offers templates whose class is visible. Make the owning class visible again, or, if it was deleted, edit each affected template and assign a replacement class.
Frequently asked questions
Do asset classes change how a token behaves?
No, not once the token exists. Everything on this screen is a design-time record: catalog membership and visibility. The one place a class reaches further is template design, where six system classes limit which base instrument type their templates may use. After issuance, the token's own policy and features govern its behavior, not the class its template belonged to.
Can a custom class use the same name as a system class?
Yes. Uniqueness applies among your organisation's own classes, so a custom "Equity" beside the system Equity is accepted, and the platform keeps them apart because templates point at a specific class rather than a name. The base-type pin keys on the derived slug, not on system status, so the custom class inherits it too: a custom Equity accepts only the equity base type, the same as the system Equity it shares a slug with. Both then appear as separate groups with the same label in pickers and catalogs, which confuses more than it organises, so pick a name that distinguishes them.
Does hiding a class affect other organisations?
No. Visibility is stored per organisation, including for system classes. Hiding Structured in your organisation leaves every other organisation untouched: its pickers and sidebar still show Structured, and so does its template catalog. Deleting is different only in scope of ownership: you can only delete classes your organisation created, and those were never visible to anyone else.
Do I have to set up classes here before designing templates?
No. The wizard's inline class is the same kind of object you'd add here: it lands in this table, and you hide or delete it the same way as any other custom class. Reach for this page instead when you want to plan the whole taxonomy up front, tidy visibility, or retire classes, none of which the wizard's inline form does.
How do I merge two classes?
No single control merges classes. Edit each template in the class you are retiring and assign the surviving class in its classification step, then hide or delete the emptied class. Reassign first so the affected templates remain available for issuance.
Can I control the order classes appear in?
No. The table, the template wizard's classification choices, and the sidebar all sort classes alphabetically by name, and there is no manual ordering. Renaming a custom class is the only way to move it, at the cost of the slug regeneration described in the steps above.