UK FCA and BoE joint feedback statement on tokenisation in wholesale markets

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Bank of England (BoE) have published a feedback statement on tokenisation in UK wholesale financial markets, summarising responses to their May joint call for input. Respondents were largely supportive of the authorities' vision and recognised that industry and regulators would need to work together to tokenise wholesale markets. The most frequently raised themes included:

• A desire for faster progress, with clear timelines and implementation milestones in the forthcoming tokenisation roadmap.
• A move beyond sandboxes and pilots towards full production, scale and permanence.
• Clarity on the prudential treatment of tokenised assets and the eligibility of tokenised assets as collateral (in both central bank operations and for central clearing at central counterparties), with tokenised Money Market Funds frequently mentioned by buy-side firms.
• Access to insolvency protections under the settlement finality regulations for blockchain-settled transactions, and the use of stablecoins as settlement assets.
• Prioritisation of regulatory work on interoperability, encompassing legal, regulatory and cross-jurisdictional dimensions.
• A preference for aligning custody rules for relevant specified investment cryptoassets (RSICs) broadly with CASS 6, with targeted overlays for blockchain-specific risks such as private key management.

The FCA and BoE confirm they will publish a tokenisation roadmap later in the year setting out detailed workstreams and target dates. Key commitments include progressing work on tokenised collateral, with a supervisory statement and discussion paper on central counterparties collateral due later this year, and consulting on rules for the safeguarding of RSICs in the first half of 2027.

Alongside the feedback statement, the FCA has issued a call for input on tokenised gold.

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