Lloyds survey: 71% of UK finance leaders expect tokenization shift

Nearly three-quarters of senior decision-makers at major UK financial institutions believe tokenization will reshape financial services, according to an annual survey by Lloyds Banking Group released on October 2, 2026. The poll of 100 executives across banks, insurers, asset managers and financial sponsors found that 71% expect blockchain-based representation of assets such as cash, bonds and funds to alter how the sector operates, as Cointelegraph reported.

Where UK institutions see the value

Rob Hale, co-head of global markets at Lloyds, framed the shift as a move from isolated experiments to shared plumbing. The next phase, he said, is about turning individual use cases into infrastructure that works at scale, supported by the interoperability and common standards needed to connect digital and traditional markets.

Lloyds argued that putting assets and payments onto digital rails could release capital tied up while transactions settle, freeing those resources for other uses. Faster settlement, in the bank’s description, would also cut the operational effort involved in financial processes by allowing transactions to execute automatically once agreed conditions are met.

The direction of travel is visible in the bank’s own pilots. In its Visa settlement trial, reported on October 1, Lloyds booked obligations through its Corporate Markets branch in Jersey, converted them into USDC obtained via Archax, and transferred the stablecoin to Visa in the United States. Lloyds ran its own Canton node while Visa settled on a separate public blockchain, a structure that tested transfers across different networks rather than requiring both parties on the same chain. Peter Left, Lloyds’ head of digital assets, said the live payments let the bank examine those capabilities in a real transaction setting.

Separately, UK Finance’s interbank tokenized deposit work — involving Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest, Nationwide and Santander, with support from Quant, EY and Linklaters — examined whether digital representations of sterling deposits could move between separate banks. One test involving three banks, including HSBC, simulated an online marketplace purchase in which funds were reserved in the buyer’s account until goods were confirmed as arrived; no physical goods changed hands.

Policy is moving in parallel

The survey’s findings land alongside a broader government and regulatory push. The Bank of England proposed extending its core settlement infrastructure toward near-24/7 availability in May, and a subsequent government payments blueprint called for tokenized and traditional money to operate inside an interoperable system.

In July, a government-backed industry task force estimated that UK leadership in tokenized finance could add as much as £33 billion ($44 billion) to annual economic output by 2035, while calling for a first tokenized government bond by early 2027. The task force comprises 54 firms across nine action groups covering settlement, collateral, legal standards and market access, and its plan also targets an end-to-end tokenized repo transaction by spring 2027. Those projections depend on adoption rates, the regulatory environment and the UK capturing a share of the global tokenized asset market.

Coordination with Washington has advanced too. In July, the US and UK treasuries recommended creating a private-sector group to test cross-border uses of tokenized assets and urged regulators on both sides to identify shared approaches. A follow-up report on August 12, covered by crypto.news, described a proposed group that would run for one year, test cross-border transactions and share technical and regulatory practices with authorities. Under those recommendations, the SEC, CFTC, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England would examine common approaches to settlement finality, regulatory treatment and market infrastructure, and would separately consider whether stablecoins and tokenized money-market funds could qualify as margin collateral at central counterparties.

Why it matters

The survey suggests tokenization has moved past curiosity among UK institutions and into planning. For corporate treasurers and settlement teams, the practical stakes are working capital and certainty: if funds can move in minutes rather than days and outside banking hours, less liquidity needs to sit idle waiting for transactions to complete.

For retail and business customers, the near-term changes will be quiet rather than dramatic — faster completion of mortgage, marketplace and cross-border transactions rather than new consumer products. The bigger question is competitive: the same task force warning about leadership implies that if the UK’s infrastructure and rulemaking lag, the activity and the associated economic output could concentrate elsewhere.

Not every detail is settled between the reports. Cointelegraph and crypto.news agree on the headline 71% figure, the 60% and 41% benefit rankings and Hale’s comments, but crypto.news adds several details not carried in the Cointelegraph piece — the jump in respondents treating technology investment as a growth priority, the 64% capital expenditure figure, and the planned company, rulebook and governance framework that UK Finance intends to establish ahead of three digital bond issues in the first quarter of 2027. Crypto.news also reported the September 24 interbank remortgage tests involving Lloyds, NatWest and Barclays, which Cointelegraph did not mention.

What to watch

The concrete milestones sit in 2027: the task force’s target of a first tokenized UK government bond by early 2027, an end-to-end tokenized repo transaction by spring 2027, and the three digital bond issues scheduled by participating UK Finance banks in the first quarter. UK Finance’s plan to stand up a dedicated company, rulebook and governance framework is the nearer-term marker of whether tokenized deposits become shared market infrastructure or remain a set of point solutions.

Sources: Cointelegraph, crypto.news