A UK tokenisation taskforce of 54 institutions published a 12-month roadmap on 13 July 2026 calling on the government to accelerate the digitalisation of wholesale financial markets. Estimates from Barclays and PwC put the gross annual benefit to the UK economy at £33bn, alongside £14bn in additional tax receipts.
The report, titled Rewiring Finance: Tokenisation as a Catalyst for UK Growth, was led by Chris Woolard CBE, whom HM Treasury appointed as its Wholesale Digital Markets Champion on 21 April 2026. The City of London Corporation serves as delivery partner and secretariat for the role.
Inside the UK Tokenisation Taskforce
The 54-member group spans the breadth of global finance. Alongside Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group, and JPMorgan, members include Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, Citi, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Fidelity International, Schroders, State Street, DTCC, Euroclear, the London Stock Exchange Group (LSE), Circle, Ripple, and Coinbase, according to CoinDesk.
Woolard previously spent eight years as chair of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The Wholesale Digital Markets Champion role was established under the Wholesale Financial Markets Digital Strategy, which the government published on 15 July 2025 as part of the Leeds Reforms.
The roadmap covers nine areas, including primary issuance, tokenised funds, payment rails, legal and regulatory certainty, interoperability standards, financial crime compliance, tax neutrality, and resilience. The taskforce will focus its first year on live use cases, starting with tokenised repo.
The report estimates the global market for tokenised assets could reach $88tn by 2035. The Barclays and PwC analysis sets the £33bn annual GDP figure as a gross benefit, before transition, implementation, or operating costs. Roughly two-thirds of that gain, the Barclays analysis finds, would flow outside the financial services sector into the wider economy.
Tokenisation refers to the digital representation of asset ownership on a blockchain, a decentralised network of computers. Trading assets as tokens is intended to increase settlement speed and reduce administrative costs by replacing legacy market infrastructure with automated software.
‘Tokenised markets offer a significant opportunity to the UK in terms of efficiency and the potential for innovation and to defend our global position in the established markets,’ the report says. It adds that, if ‘implemented at scale’, tokenisation has the potential to free up capital for growth and strengthen the UK’s competitive standing.
Miles Celic, chief executive of TheCityUK, said global competition was ‘fierce and intensifying,’ calling for the UK to be ‘much faster, more ambitious and more creative’ to stay ahead. ‘There is no automatic right to success,’ he added.
The report points to competition from the US, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, and Hong Kong. ‘A lack of pace would bring fundamental risks to the UK’s influential position as a global leading financial services hub,’ it says.
Chris Hayward, policy chairman of the City of London Corporation, said the UK could lead a ‘digital big bang in financial services’ if it accelerates the adoption of tokenisation.
The Stablecoin Backdrop
The roadmap lands against a contested regulatory backdrop. The Bank of England (BoE) published its final framework for systemic stablecoin issuers in June 2026, replacing per-person holding caps it had previously consulted on with a £40bn temporary issuer-level issuance ceiling for each designated coin.
The framework, which covers systemic stablecoin issuers only, sets a backing-asset rule allowing up to 70% in short-dated UK government debt and at least 30% in unremunerated central bank deposits. One industry participant told Reuters the 30% unremunerated-deposit requirement means ‘the business model for the UK has to be different from anywhere else in the world,’ according to a Reuters report on the final rules.
The BoE opened a three-month consultation on the revised proposals in November 2025. Regulated stablecoins are expected to operate from 2027, according to Global Government Finance.
The Bank of England‘s governor Andrew Bailey has faced sustained criticism over the BoE’s approach to digital assets. Reform UK’s Nigel Farage branded him a ‘dinosaur’ for his rhetoric on cryptocurrency, while City figures have accused the central bank of dampening the UK’s stablecoin ambitions with what they called prescriptive rules.
The tokenisation taskforce’s 12-month work plan, including a first live repo pilot, will provide the most concrete test yet of whether that regulatory friction can be reconciled with the £33bn prize the Barclays and PwC analysis sets out.
