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Seven out of ten. That’s basically how many senior UK finance bosses now think tokenization is going to fundamentally change how financial services work. A new survey from Lloyds Banking Group puts the number at exactly 71%, drawn from 100 decision-makers across major banks, insurers, asset managers, and financial sponsors.
Why It Matters
The Lloyds survey reflects a growing consensus among UK finance leaders regarding the transformative potential of tokenization in financial services. As the industry grapples with the challenges of speed and efficiency, the acknowledgment of tokenization's role in enhancing payments and liquidity management could signal a pivotal shift towards more agile and transparent financial systems. This perspective aligns with broader trends in the market, where the adoption of blockchain and digital assets is increasingly seen as essential to maintaining competitiveness in a rapidly evolving landscape.
The top benefit they see? Faster payments and settlement. Sixty percent of respondents picked that as the main draw. And 41% pointed to better collateral and liquidity management — which, if you work in back-office finance, is kind of a big deal. A lot of capital just sits locked up in slow settlement cycles. Lloyds’ view is that moving assets and payments onto digital infrastructure could free that capital and let institutions actually put it to work somewhere useful. It’s not a radical idea, but the scale of buy-in from senior people is pretty striking.
Lloyds, Archax, and the First Public Blockchain Trade
Lloyds didn’t just run a survey and call it a day. The bank has been doing real tests. Earlier this year, Lloyds worked with Archax and Canton Network on what was described as the UK’s first public blockchain transaction using tokenized deposits to buy a tokenized UK government bond. That’s not a sandbox experiment — that’s an actual trade on public infrastructure. And it matters because it starts moving tokenization from the pilot phase into something closer to real financial plumbing.
Rob Hale, co-head of global markets at Lloyds, pushed hard on one specific point: interoperability. The idea is that digital and traditional markets can’t just run in parallel forever — they need to connect. Building infrastructure that bridges both is, per Hale, the real challenge.
Not a small task.
The Bank of England is moving in the same direction. It’s proposed extending its core settlement infrastructure to near-continuous availability — basically close to 24/7 — which would align with government plans for a payments system where tokenized money and traditional money coexist and work together. That’s a meaningful shift from how settlement currently works in the UK, where cycles are still pretty much batch-based.
The £33 Billion Projection and the Push for a Tokenized Gilt
In July, a government-backed industry task force put a number on all of this. If the UK gets tokenized finance right, it could add up to £33 billion — roughly $44 billion — to the country’s annual economic output by 2035. That’s the projection. Whether it holds up depends on a lot of moving parts, but the figure got attention in policy circles.
The same task force called for the UK to issue its first tokenized government bond by early 2027. No specific issuer was named in the source, and the timeline is still subject to regulatory sign-off. But the direction of travel is clear enough.
A separate government payments blueprint, also referenced in the Lloyds materials, pushed for tokenized and traditional currencies to work within a single unified payments system. So it’s not just the Bank of England moving — it’s a broader policy push across multiple parts of government.
The UK is also reaching outward. In July, the US and UK treasuries put forward a proposal to form a private-sector group specifically to explore cross-border uses of tokenized assets. They also encouraged financial regulators in both countries to look for common ground on regulatory approaches. Whether that group actually gets stood up and does meaningful work — unclear yet. But the fact that both treasuries are talking about it at all is probably significant.
What Still Has to Happen
Full-scale adoption isn’t happening tomorrow. Regulatory approvals are still pending on multiple fronts, and the international coordination piece is genuinely hard. Getting the US and UK to agree on a regulatory framework for something as new as cross-border tokenized assets involves a lot of lawyers and a lot of time.
The Lloyds-Archax-Canton Network transaction was a start. A real one. But one transaction doesn’t make a market. The infrastructure still needs to be built out, tested at scale, and cleared through compliance frameworks that, in some cases, weren’t written with any of this in mind.
And there’s the question of whether the £33 billion projection holds. Task forces tend toward optimism. The number might be right, might be too high, might depend on conditions that don’t materialize. No one really knows yet.
What’s not murky is the direction. Seventy-one percent of senior UK finance leaders don’t all land on the same answer by accident. The Lloyds survey, the Bank of England proposals, the government blueprint, the US-UK treasury talks — they’re all pointing the same way. The Archax-Canton trade used tokenized deposits to settle a tokenized gilt on a public blockchain.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did the Lloyds Banking Group survey find about tokenization?
Lloyds surveyed 100 senior decision-makers across UK banks, insurers, asset managers, and financial sponsors. Seventy-one percent said they expect tokenization to reshape financial services, with 60% citing faster payments and settlement as the top benefit.
What was the UK’s first public blockchain transaction involving tokenized assets?
Lloyds, Archax, and Canton Network completed what was described as the UK’s first public blockchain transaction, using tokenized deposits to purchase a tokenized UK government bond.
