UK Finance and Oliver Wyman today published a report arguing that the UK has built the legal and regulatory foundations for tokenized wholesale markets but has not yet converted them into market activity. Three years after the banking body’s first tokenization report, the message is execution, and the report is careful to aim it at both government and its own members. One global sell side firm quoted in the report said the UK “feels like it’s mid-table. It’s not languishing at the bottom, but it’s not winning trophies either.”
The stakes, as the report frames them, are the UK’s largest export industry. Financial and related professional services contribute around £290 billion ($392 billion) of annual gross value added, £11 in every £100 of UK economic output, employ nearly 2.5 million people and pay over £110 billion in tax each year. If the next generation of market infrastructure anchors in New York, Frankfurt or Singapore, the report warns, UK firms will operate on rails “designed, governed and priced elsewhere.”
The most pointed request concerns the Wholesale Digital Markets Champion. The government appointed Chris Woolard to the role earlier this year to coordinate private sector delivery of the Treasury’s wholesale digital strategy, reporting to the Chancellor. The Champion’s first report set out a 12 month program run through nine action groups, with a live tokenized repo trial targeted for Spring 2027.
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