HM Treasury allocates lead manager roles for DIGIT, the UK's first digitally native government bond, with pilot issuance expected by Q1 2027

HM Treasury announced on 2 November 2026 that six banks have been allocated specific lead manager roles for the pilot issuance of DIGIT (the Digital Gilt Instrument), the UK's first digitally native government bond. Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Morgan Stanley, NatWest, and RBC Capital Markets were appointed following a competitive procurement process in October, with responsibilities spanning documentation management, settlement, bookbuilding, roadshow coordination, press communications, and a newly created Platform Coordinator role. A world-first regulatory link between HSBC Orion and LSEG B3's respective Digital Securities Depositories (infrastructure that holds and transfers digital assets on behalf of investors) has also received Bank of England regulatory approval. Under the arrangement, HSBC Orion will act as issuer depository while LSEG B3 acts as an investor depository, allowing participants to access DIGIT through either platform and reducing fragmentation between digital infrastructures. DIGIT will be digitally native and short-dated, issued on a platform operating within the Digital Securities Sandbox, and will use on-chain settlement (settlement recorded directly on a distributed ledger, rather than via traditional systems). It sits outside the government's main debt management programme and forms part of the government's Wholesale Financial Markets Digital Strategy. The pilot issuance is expected by Q1 2027.

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