UK FCA Working on Blue Print for Fund Tokenization Due This Year

The U.K.’s regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has been working with the Technology Working Group on a blueprint for fund tokenization, FCA Chair Ashley Alder said in a Thursday speech.

FCA, the U.K.’s financial regulator, published a discussion paper in February this year on updating and improving a regime for asset management in the country. The paper touched on “how fund managers might adopt distributed ledger technology to offer fully digitised funds to the public,” Alder said.

A tokenized fund is a fund that issues digital tokens that represent interests in the fund and uses distributed ledger technology.

At the time, the FCA said in its discussion paper it was actively engaging with firms and trade associations about proposals for fund tokenization to develop its thinking and consider rule changes.

“We’ve been working with the Technology Working Group, which sits under the Treasury’s Asset Management Taskforce, on a blueprint for fund tokenization,” Alder said. “The working group will publish this later in the year.”