HM Treasury said on Monday that the six banks appointed in October as joint lead managers for the Digital Gilt Instrument have now been allocated specific roles, covering documentation, bookbuilding, investor communications and helping investors onto the digital platforms through which DIGIT will be available. HSBC takes documentation, settlement and billing roles, RBC Capital Markets and Barclays coordinate the roadshow, Lloyds handles press and external communications, and NatWest and Morgan Stanley take a new role created for this deal, platform coordinator, supporting investors through joining and using their chosen platform.
Alongside the roles, the Bank of England has confirmed regulatory approval for a link between HSBC and LSEG’s digital securities depositories, which the Treasury called a world first. HSBC Orion will act as the issuer depository and LSEG B3 as an investor depository, so investors can access DIGIT through either infrastructure. The Treasury said the arrangement is meant to reduce fragmentation between digital platforms and support wider participation in the pilot.
DIGIT itself is deliberately small in scope: digitally native, short dated, issued on a platform operating within the Digital Securities Sandbox, with on chain settlement, and independent of the government’s main debt management programme. Economic Secretary Lucy Rigby said the announcements take the government another step closer to issuing the first digitally native government bond early next year. What the pilot still has not published is size, pricing or investor demand, and those remain the tests that matter when the issuance comes by the first quarter of 2027.