On 15 July 2025, HM Treasury published a Policy Paper on Wholesale Financial Markets Digital Strategy.

The Policy Paper states that the UK will drive forward the digitalisation of its wholesale financial markets across three broad areas and sets out certain commitments from the government:

  • Market optimisation: the government will optimise UK wholesale financial markets by making the necessary progressive improvements to drive efficiency and remove frictions.
  • The government’s commitments include:
  • Removing paper from UK wholesale markets, utilising regulation and legislation where necessary to achieve this.
  • Driving forward share dematerialisation, to be delivered in phases as set out in the final recommendations of the Digitisation Taskforce, in order to enhance efficiency while protecting the interests of investors.
  • Working with industry to identify other paper processes across the sector, in particular across other asset classes like bonds, and establishing how they can be dematerialised.
  • Working with the Accelerated Settlement Taskforce to identify and prioritise key areas for further automation and understand how they will deliver the ‘Commitment to Automation’ set out in the Taskforce’s implementation plan.
  • Exploring with the sector how wholesale market data could be shared more effectively.
  • Market transformation: the government will apply technologies to fundamentally reimagine and transform UK wholesale financial markets, in particular by adopting distributed ledger technology (DLT) and other key technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).
  • The government’s commitments include:
  • Ensuring there is a cross-sectoral approach to DLT adoption in wholesale financial markets, where the sector is able to identify the best DLT use cases and build cross-market coalitions to take forward live activity.
  • Supporting different digital payment innovations, including stablecoins and tokenised deposits. The regulators will explore how stablecoins can be utilised in the Digital Securities Sandbox.
  • Providing innovative and flexible legislation and regulation, particularly through the Digital Securities Sandbox, to facilitate new digital infrastructures in the UK market, and acting quickly to make any necessary regulatory changes permanent.
  • Working with the regulators to provide further clarity around the regulatory approach across key areas, including payments, funds and prudential requirements.
  • Facilitating the testing, and access to leading AI products, through initiatives such as the FCA’s Supercharged Sandbox.
  • Taking forward the issuance of DIGIT and using the findings to develop further initiatives that will drive market momentum and technological adoption more broadly.
  • Market leadership: the government will work with the sector to deliver digitalisation and with other jurisdictions and international bodies to develop a global approach.
  • The government’s commitments include:
  • Working with the sector to develop a cross-cutting approach to digitalisation of wholesale financial markets that harnesses the opportunities of technological change. This will address any further barriers to digitalisation, including regulatory barriers.
  • Appointing an industry expert as Digital Markets Champion, who will provide leadership from, and for, the sector on wholesale market digitalisation and join up work in the UK sector with other jurisdictions.