Tokenisation Can Make The UK £33B Each Year, DMC Report Says

Tokenisation is a £33 billion per annum opportunity for the UK economy, according to a new report published by the Wholesale Digital Markets Champion to the Chancellor, which outlines a roadmap for prioritising policy areas to advance the country’s leadership in wholesale digital markets. 

The Wholesale Digital Markets Champion is a UK government role held by Chris Woolard CBE, tasked with driving the adoption of tokenisation and emerging distributed ledger technologies (DLT) across wholesale financial markets. The report says that tokenised markets offer a “significant opportunity” to the UK in terms of efficiency, innovation potential and in defending the City’s global leadership in established markets. 

Woolard’s report puts the total estimate of tokenised assets by 2035 at $88 trillion, due to productivity and cost efficiencies. These savings translate into a £33bn increase in annual economic output for the UK as well as £14 billion in annual tax revenues. 

“Put simply, tokenised markets are fundamental to the future of financial services,” the report states.

To turn the opportunity into reality, there is plenty to be done, according to Woolard, who noted that while the UK has established itself as a global financial trading centre, its place in the “game” is not guaranteed, especially as tokenised markets are a network game.  

“Like all network games, it is a race and one where the UK needs to move at the speed of the most agile players if we want to ensure we have a stake in developing the approach for international markets,” Woolard said in the report. 

As next steps, 54 participating companies will feed into the work that has been outlined in the report taking into account industry priorities and supporting actions for HM Treasury. In the next 12 months, The Digital Markets Champion Industry Taskforce will act to drive action around the ten outlined priorities by taking a cross-sectoral approach to use cases, many of which will focus on fixed income. Additional asset classes, such as commodities, will also be explored while a repo use case aims to run a live trial by spring 2027.

“The opportunity is clear, the foundations are in place, and now the task is to move from pilots to scale, from ambition to action, and from participation to leadership,” the report concludes.