HM Treasury and the DMO are seeking views from industry to inform the development and delivery of the pilot DIGIT issuance.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced details of the launch of the procurement process for the pilot Digital Gilt Instrument (DIGIT) issuance.

HMT has published additional information, engagement questions and has issued a Preliminary Market Engagement Notice through the contract finder service. This provides further information on the scope of the DIGIT pilot and seeks views from potential suppliers including the financial services sector, to inform the development and delivery of DIGIT.

In November 2024, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced at Mansion House the launch of a pilot Digital Gilt Instrument (DIGIT) issuance, leveraging cutting-edge distributed ledger technology (DLT). This announcement was followed by a Written Statement to Parliament, outlining further details of the issuance and highlighting the Government’s commitment to engaging with the sector in 2025.

This announcement represents the first step of the Government’s work with the sector towards achieving a successful DIGIT issuance. This exercise will allow the Government to understand the current landscape of services available, or in development, in the UK, as well as to gain insight into what potential investors want to see from a DIGIT issuance to help inform HMT’s commercial strategy.

The DIGIT Pilot

DIGIT will support the Government’s commitment to maintain the UK as a world-leading and global financial centre. As other financial hubs explore DLT, the potential for significant growth in this area is clear. By launching now, the Government is positioning the UK financial services sector to take advantage of this opportunity.

The pilot is seeking to:

• Enable the Government to explore how DLT can be applied to UK sovereign debt issuance processes.
• Catalyse the development of UK based DLT infrastructure and the adoption of DLT across UK financial markets.

The pilot’s initial design features have been set in order to meet these aims and include DIGIT being digitally native, short-dated, issued on a platform operating within the Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS), and independent of the Government’s main debt management programme.

Next Steps

HMT and the DMO are seeking responses to the questions in the Preliminary Market Engagement Notice by 11.59pm on 13 April 2025.

Source: UK Treasury