The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has set out what it says is an ambitious new growth plan for 2026, which includes supporting UK-issued stablecoin cryptocurrency to provide faster and more convenient payments.The plan comes as Lloyds Bank called for an overhaul of the UK financial system to enable customer deposits on the blockchain, as reported by the Financial Times.
Combining tokenised deposits with artificial intelligence could spark a change in the financial services sector as significant as the invention of the smartphone, Lloyds CEO Charlie Nunn told the Financial Times Global Banking Summit.
He added:
“If you blend these two technologies together, if you think about digital assets and tokenised deposits with AI, you can suddenly redesign significant parts of financial services.”
Lloyds Bank is planning to pair the technology with AI models to dramatically reduce the time spent buying houses and cut out the various intermediaries involved in the process, Nunn explained.
“Take mortgages, the whole conveyancing, document sharing, value exchange and payments process can be built into a smart contract, and the whole thing can be guided with or without a broker, with an agent giving advice to customers. You can redesign buying and selling homes completely with those two technologies.”
The FCA says it will enable firms to experiment with the issuance of stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency, by opening its regulatory sandbox for safe testing and to support innovative policy development.
In a letter to the prime minister, the FCA said that, following nearly 50 growth commitments laid out at the start of the year, the vast majority have been met, with further initiatives to support growth delivered.
The package of growth reforms enables firms to scale, supports home ownership, bolsters capital markets, and gives consumers more options to invest, the FCA said.
Next year, the regulator will deliver a new wave of growth initiatives to focus on more efficient supervision, the digitalisation of financial services, increasing SME lending, and boosting trade and international competitiveness.
“Supporting growth helps consumers, improving their financial resilience and providing more choice,” said Nikhil Rathi, chief executive of the FCA.
“Our reforms help the UK maintain its global competitive edge in our world-leading wholesale markets, attract international investment, and lead on innovation in financial services. We will continue to embrace a bolder risk appetite to support growth, while maintaining our commitment to protect consumers and ensure market integrity.”
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Lenders like Lloyds Bank are tying themselves in knots. Talk of blockchain and AI in homebuying only highlights the paradox: lawyers are pressed for unqualified certificates of title, yet lenders simultaneously erode their own security by chasing “real‑time perfection of title.”
It’s a bandwagon with no wheels. Technology may promise speed, but property rights rest on statute, precedent, and due process—not on algorithms. Conveyancing is not a friction to be eliminated; it is a highly professional discipline that ensures fairness, transparency, and enforceability.
By demanding instant perfection, lenders risk weakening the very safeguards that protect their securities. The irony is stark: the more they demand from their lawyers, the less secure their own position becomes.
What a difference to completion day this would make however. An Instantly updated ledger.
Finally nuking the gross incompetence, sociopathy and idiocy ruining the day for clients with waiting for keys.
Not to mention allowing moving companies to finally work proper hours. To stop being treated, frankly, very very badly. Made to sit around for hours because their clients aren’t being treated with any urgency it respect.
Only then, to have to deal with angry stressed customers, fed up that they only got into their new home at 4pm. With 3-4 hours worth of moving in ahead of them
With the moving crew themselves equally angry. Facing missing kids bedtimes, dinner, and angry partners. And they face this every working day.
For why?
Because conveyancing is performed so utterly bereft if proper concern, professionalism, or skill.
This needs to happen. Thank You Lloyds.