Chris Woolard's Taskforce Could Reshape Access to Startup Capital

Chris Woolard has spent most of his career deciding how UK financial markets get regulated. This month he published his first report on how they get rebuilt.

As HM Treasury's Wholesale Digital Markets Champion, Woolard delivered his opening report to the Chancellor on 13 July, backed by a taskforce of 54 firms including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, UBS, Barclays and Citi, alongside a run of digital asset specialists.

The headline numbers, up to £33 billion in annual UK economic output and £14 billion in tax revenue by 2035, are designed to get attention in Whitehall. The more interesting story, for founders and early stage investors, is who is doing the work and why the plumbing question matters at all.

What the appointment says

Woolard is not a career banker parachuted into a digital assets brief. He spent eight years at the FCA, including a stint as interim chief executive in 2020, and before that ran the regulator's competition and strategy work across wholesale and retail banking, asset management and insurance. He also founded the FCA's regulatory sandbox, the programme that let early fintechs test products under supervision rather than wait years for full authorisation. More than 40 countries have copied it since.

A regulator who understands both the rulebook and the appetite for controlled experimentation is unusual. It is also precisely the skill set this taskforce needs. The report's own framing calls tokenisation "a network game", one where speed and coordination between regulator and industry matter as much as the technology itself.

What the taskforce is building

For now, the mandate is wholesale markets only. The taskforce is organised around live use cases, starting with tokenised repo, and its most concrete deliverable is DIGIT, the UK's planned tokenised gilt, which HM Treasury wants piloted by the first quarter of 2027. Success would make the UK the first G7 country to issue tokenised government debt. The Bank of England is separately weighing whether tokenised assets can count as eligible collateral in its Sterling Monetary Framework, with a discussion paper expected later this year.

None of that touches a startup cap table directly. But the questions the taskforce has to answer to make gilts and repo work at scale, how ownership is proven, how settlement happens instantly rather than in days, how legal certainty travels with a digital record rather than a paper one, are the same questions that currently make early stage equity illiquid and expensive to move. Wholesale markets tend to solve these problems first because they have the capital and the regulatory attention to do so. Private markets, including startup equity, usually inherit the standard once it exists rather than building their own from scratch.

The capital access case

For founders, the practical read today is patience rather than immediate relevance. SEIS and EIS backed shares already carry a three year holding period that keeps early investors locked in regardless of a company's progress, a structural drag on the retail capital that funds most first cheques in the UK. PISCES, the FCA's new intermittent trading venue for private company shares, is one live attempt to shorten that wait without disturbing the underlying tax reliefs. If the custody and settlement standards Woolard's taskforce establishes at gilt scale prove workable, they are a plausible template for how tokenised equity registers and secondary venues like PISCES eventually get built on proven legal certainty, rather than as bespoke, unproven infrastructure.

For investors, the case runs the other way. Illiquidity is priced into every early stage cheque. Anything that credibly shortens the distance between committing capital and being able to exit, even years out, changes the maths on how much return investors need to demand up front.

None of this is close. Woolard's next report, due to the Chancellor by July 2027, covers distributed ledger interoperability standards, still a wholesale markets question. But an FCA veteran with sandbox instincts now has a mandate, a taskforce and a deadline. Whether that speeds up the standards early stage capital eventually needs is the thing worth watching over the next year, not the gilt pilot itself.

Key Takeaways

• Chris Woolard, HM Treasury's Wholesale Digital Markets Champion and a former FCA interim chief executive, published his first report to the Chancellor on 13 July, backed by a 54 firm taskforce.

• Woolard founded the FCA's regulatory sandbox in 2016, a model since adopted in more than 40 countries, giving him a direct track record in building supervised space for early stage innovation.

• The taskforce's immediate focus is wholesale markets: tokenised repo, and DIGIT, the UK's planned tokenised gilt, targeted for a pilot by Q1 2027.

• The custody, settlement and legal certainty standards being built for gilts at wholesale scale are the same standards tokenised equity and PISCES linked secondary markets will eventually need.

• For founders and early stage investors, the relevance is indirect and years out, but the direction of travel points toward eventually cheaper, more liquid access to early stage capital.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Chris Woolard?

Chris Woolard is HM Treasury's Wholesale Digital Markets Champion. He spent eight years at the FCA, including a stint as interim chief executive in 2020, and founded the FCA's regulatory sandbox, which more than 40 countries have since copied.

What did Chris Woolard's first Wholesale Digital Markets report say?

Woolard delivered his opening report to the Chancellor on 13 July, backed by a taskforce of 54 firms including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and HSBC. Its headline estimate is up to £33 billion in annual UK economic output and £14 billion in tax revenue by 2035.

What is DIGIT, the UK tokenised gilt?

DIGIT is the UK's planned tokenised gilt, which HM Treasury wants piloted by the first quarter of 2027. Success would make the UK the first G7 country to issue tokenised government debt.

How could the UK tokenisation taskforce affect startup funding?

The taskforce's mandate is wholesale markets only, so the effect on startups is indirect and years away. If its custody, settlement and legal certainty standards prove workable for gilts, they are a plausible template for tokenised equity registers and secondary venues such as PISCES.

When is Chris Woolard's next report due?

His next report is due to the Chancellor by July 2027. It covers distributed ledger interoperability standards, which is still a wholesale markets question.

This article is general information, not financial or investment advice.

Sources:

Chris Woolard Unveils 54 Firm UK Tokenisation Taskforce (CoinDesk, coindesk.com) · Government publishes Terms of Reference for Wholesale Digital Markets Champion (GOV.UK, gov.uk) · Christopher Woolard appointed Interim Chief Executive of the FCA (FCA, fca.org.uk)