Seven in Ten UK Financial Institutions See Tokenisation as a System-Wide Shift, Lloyds Survey Finds
Seven in Ten UK Financial Institutions See Tokenisation as a System-Wide Shift, Lloyds Survey Finds #
Tokenisation has become a mainstream expectation among Britain’s largest financial institutions, according to new research from Lloyds Banking Group published on 2 October 2026.
The bank’s tenth annual Financial Institutions Sentiment Survey canvassed 100 senior decision-makers at UK banks, insurers, financial sponsors and asset and wealth managers between April and May 2026. It found that 71% of respondents expect tokenisation to fundamentally transform how money and assets move through the financial system.
When survey participants were asked to identify the most valuable applications of the technology, faster payments and settlement ranked first, cited by 60% of respondents. Collateral and liquidity management came second, flagged by 41%. According to the company’s announcement, tokenisation enables real-world assets such as cash, bonds and funds to be represented digitally on blockchain-based infrastructure and transferred more efficiently, while preserving the protections associated with traditional financial instruments. By linking currency conversion, payment and settlement into a single transaction flow, the technology could free up capital and liquidity currently tied up in financial processes.
Technology investment is also rising across the sector. The proportion of institutions describing investment in new and emerging technologies as a growth priority nearly doubled year-on-year, from 41% in 2025 to 77% in this year’s survey. Almost two-thirds, 64%, said they plan to increase capital expenditure over the next 12 months. Respondents also named the modernisation of financial and market infrastructure as one of the UK’s greatest near-term economic opportunities.
Lisa Francis, Global Head of Corporate and Institutional Banking Coverage at Lloyds, said the priority now is scale and interoperability. “The real opportunity is to make financial markets work faster, more efficiently and with greater flexibility for clients,” she said in the company’s statement. “Faster settlement, more efficient use of collateral and better movement of liquidity are tangible benefits that boost balance sheets. The next phase is about turning those individual use cases into infrastructure that works at scale, with the interoperability and common standards needed to connect digital and traditional markets.”
The survey’s publication follows a busy year for Lloyds in digital assets. The bank completed live tokenised deposit transactions as part of Project Agorá’s real-value testing in July 2026, and settled $750,000 in USDC with Visa earlier this year. It is also a participant in the Great British Tokenised Deposits initiative alongside other major UK high-street banks.
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