HM Treasury names six banks for DIGIT digital gilt

HM Treasury today appointed six banks as Joint Lead Managers for DIGIT, the UK’s first digitally native government bond, completing procurement and allowing investor engagement to begin. Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Morgan Stanley, NatWest and RBC Capital Markets won the roles after a competitive procurement process.

A Joint Lead Manager is a bank that underwrites and distributes a bond issue. The six will provide those traditional services, support investor engagement and distribute DIGIT on issuance day. The pilot is expected to take place by the first quarter of 2027 (Q1 2027).

DIGIT is a gilt, the UK term for a government bond, that is digitally native, meaning it is created and recorded on a ledger from the start. It is short-dated and delivers on-chain settlement, where ownership transfers are recorded directly on the ledger. It will be issued on a platform operating within the Digital Securities Sandbox, and is independent of the main debt management programme.

HSBC is the supplier of distributed ledger technology (DLT), the shared ledger that records ownership. Treasury appointed the bank to that role in February 2026. In July 2026 HSBC and the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) signed a memorandum of understanding for a bilateral Digital Securities Depository link. A depository is the institution that holds securities and records who owns them.

For brokers, custodians and trading venues, the practical question is whether settlement, custody and connectivity set-ups can handle DLT-issued sovereign debt alongside conventional gilts. That is LeapRate’s reading of the design, not a point the release makes.

The pilot has two stated aims: to explore DLT in UK sovereign debt issuance, and to catalyse UK-based DLT infrastructure and DLT adoption across UK financial markets. The pilot will explore DLT across the issuance and lifecycle of the bond.

Lucy Rigby KC MP, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, announced the appointments today in a keynote at Digital Assets Week.

Digitalisation is central to ensuring that the UK can be a global hub for digital assets and the government’s commitment to the issuance of a digital gilt is a core part of this agenda. The appointment of Lead Managers marks an important step as we work towards issuance early next year.

Lucy Rigby KC MP, Economic Secretary to the Treasury