On 2 July 2025, the Bank of England published a speech delivered by Sasha Mills (Executive Director, Financial Market Infrastructure) at City Week 2025. The speech signals the Bank's support for the digitalisation of...more
The Bank of England (BoE) has published a series of documents regarding its work on implementing the digital pound. The Digital Pound Experiment Report on Offline Payments assesses the technical feasibility of implementing an...more
The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced details of the launch of the procurement process for the pilot digital gilt instrument (DIGIT) issuance. The pilot aims to: (i) enable the government to explore how distributed...more
On 14 January 2025, the Bank of England ("BoE") published a design note outlining its current thinking relating to the design of a digital pound (the "Design Note") and a progress update summarising the BoE’s work on...more
In our previous Comparative Guide, we explored innovations in private forms of digital money and money-like instruments available to retail customers, including fiatreferencing stablecoins, e-money and tokenised deposits. As...more
This articles provides some insights on the direction of travel in the UK in relation to distributed ledger technology (DLT) and digital assets, in light of recent legislative and policy developments that signal the UK’s...more
Key developments of interest over the last month include: the European Parliament’s ECON Committee adopting draft reports on the European Commission’s PSR and PSD3 legislative proposals; ESMA consulting on 'reverse...more
On February 7, 2023, the Bank of England (BoE) released two documents concerning a central bank digital currency (CBDC), a prospective government-backed digital form of U.K. currency also known as the "digital pound." ...more
Crypto Rating Council releases its securities law framework - On May 11, 2021, the Crypto Rating Council (CRC) released the securities framework it developed to assess the likelihood of a digital asset being deemed a...more
What has happened? The Bank of England (BoE) has confirmed that its revamped real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system will be compatible with interface systems that run on blockchain-based technology....more
Below is a summary of some of the significant legal and regulatory actions that occurred over the past week. This alert is not intended to be a comprehensive list of all such developments, but rather a selection of...more
In its 2015 Productivity Plan, the government committed to working with UK regulators to publish Innovation Plans setting out how legislation and enforcement frameworks could adapt to emerging technologies and disruptive...more
Bad news for RBS, which is tasked with scrounging up more capital after failing its Bank of England stress test—a bad sign for a British financial system still coping with Brexit fallout....more