Barclays and PwC Say Tokenisation Could Add £33bn a Year to UK GDP by 2035, With Two Thirds Reaching Beyond Financial Services

Barclays published a report with PwC on 9 July putting a number on something the UK tokenisation sector has mostly argued from instinct rather than evidence: what the technology is actually worth to the country. The answer, according to "Rewiring Finance: Tokenisation as a Catalyst for UK Growth", is up to £33bn in additional GDP per year by 2035, with roughly two thirds of that benefit landing outside financial services altogether.

Just think about that, Most tokenisation coverage, including plenty of it on this site, treats the technology as a financial services story: settlement speed, collateral mobility, fund structures. Barclays and PwC are making a different claim and using a computable general equilibrium model across six use cases, government bonds, fund management, foreign exchange, trade finance, real estate and corporate bonds, they estimate the productivity gains 'ripple' into the wider economy through lower transaction costs, an estimated £11bn increase in investment in productive assets, and more efficient capital allocation across sectors that have nothing to do with banking.

The gap between the two scenarios the report models is an interesting number for anyone building in this space. With decisive UK policy action, the annual gain reaches £33bn by 2035. Without it, the same broad trend still happens, but the benefit falls to around £22bn. The £11bn difference is not a forecasting margin of error, but is, in the report's own framing, the cost of the UK failing to act with intent on a technology that is moving regardless of what British regulators decide.

Money, in other words, that other jurisdictions will capture if London hesitates.

For founders and investors in the tokenised equity space specifically, the report's near term priorities sit a rung above where most of this audience operates. Barclays and PwC identify wholesale markets, cross border payments, interbank settlement, tokenised government debt and tokenised funds, as the clearest starting point, and they name corporate bonds, private markets and infrastructure finance as the areas where the UK's comparative advantage is strongest. Startup equity is not in that list.

But the report matters to founder stage tokenisation for a reason that has nothing to do with its specific use cases and everything to do with sequencing. Infrastructure, standards and regulatory comfort built for wholesale tokenisation become the rails that private company and early stage tokenisation eventually run on. It's essentially the same logic this site has applied before to Ondo's stock tokenisation volumes and to the Digital Securities Sandbox cohort: nobody tokenises a seed round in a regulatory vacuum, and the plumbing gets laid at the top of the market first.

The five policy recommendations are where the report earns its place as more than a cheerleading exercise.

1. Set a clear national direction and promote the UK proposition internationally.

2. Build momentum in priority use cases, including exploring the conversion of legacy gilt stock into digital format, a nod to the DIGIT pilot HM Treasury has already begun.

3. Make interoperability a distinctive strength by working with the US, EU and Hong Kong to harmonise standards rather than let the UK build in isolation.

4. Address scaling barriers directly, including faster licensing, clearer prudential treatment and, notably, explicit attention to how tokenised assets are treated in insolvency, a question this site has flagged before in the context of SEIS and nominee structures.

5. And finally, connect tokenisation to the government's wider Industrial Strategy sectors rather than treating it as a financial services side project.

That last point is the one with the most direct relevance for the founder access story this publication has been tracking. Barclays and PwC are explicit that the technology is "too often viewed as a financial services specific technology issue, rather than a system level change in how value moves across the economy." Read against the backdrop of UK Finance's own report last week warning that Britain is behind on securities tokenisation, and against the Wholesale Digital Markets Champion's taskforce due to give its first forward look this month, the picture is of a sector where the ambition is now well documented and the execution gap is the live question. Matt Hammerstein, Barclays UK Corporate Bank's CEO, called it a matter that should be treated as "a strategic priority for UK competitiveness." James Moseley, PwC UK's digital assets lead, framed it as Britain's "next frontier of finance."

Neither of these parties are disinterested observers and it is worth naming that - a bank and a professional services firm both stand to do well from a bigger, faster moving tokenisation market.

But the modelling methodology is disclosed, the estimates are explicitly gross rather than net of implementation cost, and the report is candid about the downside case: fragmented or poorly governed tokenisation could create new risks around financial stability, operational resilience and consumer trust, particularly for users who do not fully understand the products they are being offered. This caveat should sit alongside the headline figure whenever it gets quoted.

What happens next is largely in the government's hands and the report lands a few weeks before Chris Woolard, the Wholesale Digital Markets Champion appointed in April, is due to publish his initial forward look, and in a summer when the FCA and Bank of England are working through the feedback from their own Call for Input on the future of tokenisation, which closed on 3 July.

Whether Barclays and PwC's £11bn incentive is enough to sharpen that response will start to become visible over the next month.

Key Takeaways

• Barclays and PwC estimate tokenisation could add up to £33bn a year to UK GDP by 2035 with decisive policy action, against £22bn without it, an £11bn gap attributed directly to the pace and clarity of government action.

• Roughly two thirds of the projected benefit falls outside financial services, driven by lower transaction costs, an estimated £11bn increase in investment in productive assets, and more efficient capital allocation economy wide.

• The report's five recommendations include exploring conversion of legacy gilt stock to digital format, faster licensing routes, and explicit treatment of tokenised assets in insolvency law, an issue with direct relevance to SEIS linked tokenised equity structures.

• Near term priority use cases named are wholesale markets, corporate bonds, private markets and infrastructure finance, not startup equity directly, but the standards and infrastructure built there typically become the rails earlier stage tokenisation later depends on.

• The report arrives ahead of two live UK decision points: Chris Woolard's first forward look as Wholesale Digital Markets Champion, due this month, and the FCA and Bank of England's response to their Call for Input on tokenisation, which closed 3 July.

Sources: Barclays and PwC, "Rewiring Finance: Tokenisation as a Catalyst for UK Growth", 9 July 2026. https://home.barclays/insights/2026/07/Rewiring-Finance-Tokenisation-Catalyst-UK-Growth/