Lloyds survey shows 71% of UK finance leaders betting on tokenization

The shift to on-chain finance

Real talk: the UK’s financial giants are finally waking up to the power of the blockchain. A new survey from Lloyds Banking Group found that 71% of senior decision-makers at top UK banks, insurers, and asset managers believe tokenization is about to flip the script on how financial services actually run.

Lloyds polled 100 leaders to see where the industry is moving. The consensus? It's all about speed. A massive 60% of respondents identified faster payments and settlement as the primary W, while 41% noted that better collateral and liquidity management are highkey priorities. By moving assets and payments onto digital infrastructure, firms could unlock capital that currently gets stuck in traditional settlement loops.

Moving past the pilot phase

Rob Hale, co-head of global markets at Lloyds, noted that the industry is graduating from simple testing to building real infrastructure. “The next phase is about turning those individual use cases into infrastructure that works at scale,” Hale explained. The bank is already getting their hands dirty with the tech, having successfully executed a public blockchain transaction involving tokenized deposits to buy a tokenized UK government bond earlier this year alongside Archax and the Canton Network.

The government’s big bet

It’s not just the banks getting loud about this. UK policymakers are pushing to integrate tokenization into the national infrastructure. The Bank of England is eyeing near-24/7 settlement, and a government task force estimates that leaning into tokenized finance could inject 33 billion British pounds into the economy by 2035. They’re even gunning for the country’s first tokenized government bond by early 2027. Plus, the UK and US are starting to vibe on shared regulatory approaches to make cross-border tokenized assets a reality.

Why it matters

This isn't just hype for the degens; it’s a sign that institutional money is serious about replacing legacy systems with programmable, on-chain alternatives. While these moves are promising for market efficiency, keep in mind that this is institutional infrastructure development—not financial advice—and adoption is a slow grind, not a moon mission.