UK appoints six banks to lead DIGIT, its first digitally native gilt, with the pilot expected by Q1 2027
Victoria Shinder1 min readThe UK government appointed six firms as Joint Lead Managers for the pilot issuance of DIGIT, the Digital Gilt Instrument, on 6 October. The appointments were announced in a keynote speech by City minister Lucy Rigby, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, at Digital Assets Week.
The six banks. Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Morgan Stanley, NatWest and RBC Capital Markets, chosen after a competitive procurement. They will provide traditional lead manager services, including underwriting, investor engagement and distribution on issuance day. The Treasury says the appointments complete the procurement process and allow investor engagement to begin.
The pilot. DIGIT is expected to be issued by the first quarter of 2027. Its design, as listed by the Treasury:
- digitally native and short-dated;
- issued on a platform operating within the Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS);
- settled on-chain;
- independent of the government's main debt management programme.
The stated aims are to explore how distributed ledger technology can be applied to the issuance and life cycle of UK sovereign debt, and to encourage UK-based DLT infrastructure and its adoption across financial markets.
Earlier steps. HSBC was appointed as the DLT supplier in February, and in July HSBC and the London Stock Exchange Group signed a memorandum of understanding on a bilateral link between digital securities depositories.
"The appointment of Lead Managers marks an important step as we work towards issuance early next year," Rigby said. The release does not give a size for the pilot issue.