Head of Agentic AI and Data Science Research

FCA working with PDG, AMI and MaPS to increase protection take-up among unprotected consumers. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is leading groups from across the financial services industry to increase consumer take-up of protection, particularly focusing on those disproportionately unprotected. The regulator highlighted several approaches with public sector and industry partners as part of its pure protection market study final report and said it expects meaningful progress over the next 12 to 18 months. This includes working with the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS), Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG), Protection Distributors Group (PDG) and Association of Mortgage Intermediaries (AMI). As part of this action, it has laid out ground rules for the participants including governance, funding and engagement approaches. It also encouraged distributors to collect and share data on where consumers were first prompted so it can monitor prompt effectiveness of the initiatives. Furthermore, the regulator is exploring other significant options to prompt people about protection insurance. PDG. The FCA has asked the PDG to lead the market's key stakeholders in developing a market-wide initiative aimed at addressing weak consumer engagement with and understanding of protection. The FCA said it "expect[s] the market to work together with the PDG to develop a sustained programme of work rather than a one-off marketing campaign, with its future development informed by evidence of consumer engagement, understanding and outcomes". It should seek to engage all relevant consumer segments, with particular focus on groups that are under-engaged by existing market routes, including renters, the self-employed and gig-economy workers. Its purpose should be to enable consumers to better reduce their financial vulnerability. The FCA added: "Robust governance will be essential." The PDG intends to establish arrangements including an executive group to develop and deliver the programme and an oversight board to provide strategic direction, accountability and challenge. Both groups will be selected from across the industry. "We consider this a sensible approach, which will give the initiative the legitimacy, accountability and decision-making capability needed to move from industry support in principle to sustained delivery in practice," the FCA continued. "Market participants and other relevant stakeholders should engage constructively with the initiative, provide appropriate resource, financial support and active and collaborative participation. "Funding arrangements should be agreed as an early priority and should be equitable, proportionate and sufficient to support the professional development, launch, governance, measurement and sustained delivery of an effective engagement programme. "We expect relevant firms and industry bodies to participate in and work through the governance structure that PDG will establish, and to agree those arrangements at pace." AMI. AMI will lead a cross-industry initiative to strengthen adviser engagement with protection. "Given AMI's engagement across the mortgage and insurance intermediary market, and insight from its annual Viewpoint research into adviser and consumer attitudes, it has an appropriate platform to coordinate practical support for advisers," the FCA said. "AMI will help shape a consistent industry approach that supports advisers in understanding, discussing and recommending protection solutions more effectively. "This includes improving awareness of the value and relevance of protection products, increasing adviser confidence in discussing protection with clients and encouraging more frequent and consistent protection conversations throughout the advice journey and at key life stages, particularly for underserved groups." It noted that outputs will be developed with input from stakeholders across the market and designed for different intermediary models. The FCA added that "stakeholders across the protection market should engage actively with and support AMI in delivering this initiative". 'Clear success measures' In launching these initiatives, the FCA highlighted that to be effective, the AMI and PDG-led initiatives should work alongside and support existing industry and stakeholder activity. "Stakeholders should seek to coordinate efforts and share learning to maximise impact," it said. It also emphasised these initiatives must be designed and delivered in a way consistent with competition law. "They should also have clear success measures and monitoring arrangements, enabling progress and outcomes to be assessed in a proportionate and transparent way," it added. MaPS. The MaPS has agreed to expand the protection information available on its MoneyHelper website with this work already underway, with updates made to death and bereavement guidance and renting guidance and further enhancements planned for MoneyHelper Savings guidance later this year. MaPS will then continue to give consideration to where and how protection and insurance signposts can be appropriately positioned across MoneyHelper. The FCA said this will give consumers a neutral source of information on protection, when it may be relevant, and where they can seek further support. In addition, as part of the forthcoming refresh of the UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing, which MaPS has a statutory duty to co-ordinate, MaPS is considering how protection can be more explicitly reflected within the strategy and its associated activities. DPMSG. The Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG) has agreed to include protection information within its Digital Property Information Protocol (for England and Wales), which supports the outcomes set out in the government's home buying and selling reform roadmap. The website features a digital end-to-end property buying and selling process, explains the roles and responsibilities of each profession and identifies data requirements each sector needs at every stage. The website features a buyer-facing 'Finance and Protection' page outlining relevant financial products such as mortgages, buildings insurance, contents insurance and pure protection. "This will help prompt consumers to consider protection as part of the home-buying process, by signposting its role alongside other financial commitments and decisions," the FCA said. The FCA said it will provide policy and behavioural economics expertise as well as monitor effectiveness, working with participating organisations to assess reach and engagement with the prompts and reviewing data on whether consumers subsequently seek information or advice about protection. 'Meaningful progress in 12 to 18 months' "From October 2026, we will start to engage with industry, firms and wider stakeholders to mobilise the work and establish arrangements for delivery," the FCA said. "Its work and industry-led actions will begin by the end of 2026, and Healthcare & Protection expect meaningful progress over the next 12 to 18 months. "Healthcare & Protection will monitor implementation closely and regularly review progress, including publishing a short update on delivery and progress by the end of 2027. "Healthcare & Protection will assess the effectiveness of these interventions and continue to engage with stakeholders to understand emerging challenges and opportunities. "We expect these initiatives to increase consumer engagement with and access to protection products, and ultimately reduce the protection gap, helping more consumers build financial resilience against illness, incapacity and bereavement," it added.

Value for Money: Industry flags concerns over forward-looking metrics. The Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) consultation process closed this week, as it continues to develop the proposed Value for Money (VfM) rulebook that the government hopes will strengthen and future-proof DC savings. Pension providers and trade bodies have widely welcomed the proposed system, but several have flagged concerns over issues such as forward-looking performance metrics and the absence of collective defined contribution arrangements from the rulebook. In its response, TPT Retirement Solutions argued that regulators needed to ensure that "forward-looking projections do not dilute accountability for poor performance". The FCA has previously asked for suggestions as to how forward-looking performance predictions could be incorporated into VfM assessments. TPT said forward-looking metrics should not be given too much weight, with "realised member outcomes [remaining] the primary determinant of value". This would ensure that providers do not attempt to mask poor performance by changing forward-looking assumptions. Performance forecasts and 'dry runs' Ruari Grant, head of policy at TPT, said: "Schemes cannot be left to effectively mark their own homework, particularly when considering the current dispersion in member outcomes, and the commercial consequences that will flow from a VfM assessment. "And, given the government's wider consolidation agenda, under which VfM will become a key mechanism for determining what 'good' looks like, it is essential that assessments are driven by objective evidence of member value rather than subjective interpretation or narrative." Kate Smith, head of pensions at Aegon, agreed that past performance should carry more weight, and welcomed the FCA's plan to "place more emphasis on actual customer outcomes and experience". The Society of Pension Professionals, in its response, recommended that the weighting of future projections in a scheme's overall rating should be capped at 30%. Smith said Aegon had "serious concerns" about how VfM was to be implemented, and urged the government to agree to a test phase "behind closed doors". The government has agreed to a delay to full implementation of the VfM system, with the first year only covering the largest schemes and master trusts and with no regulatory penalties being imposed. "Just because there won't be regulatory consequences, it doesn't mean there won't be commercial and reputational damage consequences," Smith said. "All eyes will be on the published data and ratings, with the industry coming under immense scrutiny [and] information potentially taken out of context. "This could be made worse if it turns out that there's a lack of consistency in how trustees and providers have interpreted their VfM input data, which will influence the comparator data, and how default arrangements are assessed against this." The Association of Consulting Actuaries also raised this concern in its response, and called for a "dry run" led by the Pensions Regulator and Financial Conduct Authority for the first year. "Data and assessment outcomes should remain unpublished during that first cycle, allowing issues with the metrics and comparisons to be identified before they influence the market," the association said in a statement.

BCP Technologies settles tokenised t-bill trade with sterling stablecoin tGBP. London-based BCP Technologies completes its first live on-chain purchase of Archax's $GOVY tokenised US Treasury bill, settling the trade in sterling stablecoin tGBP. London-based BCP Technologies has completed what it describes as its first live purchase of a tokenised United States Treasury bill, settling the transaction entirely on-chain using its proprietary sterling stablecoin, tGBP. The counterparty instrument was the $GOVY product issued by Archax, a regulated digital asset exchange and custodian. The settlement marks a concrete operational milestone for the United Kingdom's nascent on-chain capital markets infrastructure - moving the conversation about stablecoins and tokenised securities from theoretical pilot programmes into live, commercially meaningful execution. For observers who have tracked the slow maturation of distributed ledger technology within institutional finance, the significance of this trade lies not in its headline size but in its structural composition. A sterling-denominated stablecoin was used to purchase a tokenised representation of one of the world's most liquid and trusted asset classes - the US Treasury bill. That pairing, executed cleanly and on-chain, demonstrates a working settlement rail that could, in principle, be replicated at scale across a broader universe of tokenised fixed-income instruments. Why tGBP and $GOVY matter together. The choice of Archax's $GOVY as the acquired instrument is deliberate and telling. Archax has positioned itself as one of the UK's most credible regulated venues for tokenised real-world assets, and its $GOVY product offers institutional buyers exposure to short-duration US government paper in a digitally native format. Pairing that with tGBP - a sterling stablecoin designed to reflect the pound sterling on a one-to-one basis - creates a settlement mechanism that is both currency-familiar to UK institutions and operationally efficient, eliminating the correspondent banking delays that characterise conventional cross-border or even domestic fixed-income settlement. Traditional settlement of government securities in the United Kingdom typically routes through established central securities depositories and clearing houses, a process that, while reliable, involves multiple intermediaries, settlement lag, and reconciliation overhead. On-chain settlement compresses that process dramatically. When the stablecoin and the tokenised asset exist on the same ledger infrastructure, delivery versus payment can, in theory, become atomic - the asset and the cash leg move simultaneously, removing counterparty exposure during the settlement window. BCP Technologies' completed trade is an early live demonstration of that principle operating outside a sandbox environment. The UK's broader tokenisation ambitions. This transaction does not exist in isolation. The United Kingdom's financial regulators and policymakers have, over the past several years, articulated an ambition to position Britain as a leading jurisdiction for digital securities and asset tokenisation. The Financial Conduct Authority has been developing its Digital Securities Sandbox alongside Bank of England engagement on wholesale settlement infrastructure, while HM Treasury has signalled interest in a regulatory framework that accommodates sterling stablecoins used in financial market contexts. BCP Technologies' live trade sits squarely within that policy ambition - providing regulators with a real-world data point about how sterling stablecoins can function as settlement assets in tokenised securities markets. The timing is also relevant from a competitive geopolitical standpoint. Jurisdictions including the European Union - through its European Securities and Markets Authority and the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation framework - as well as Singapore and the United Arab Emirates have each moved aggressively to attract tokenised asset issuance and settlement infrastructure. The United Kingdom, post-Brexit, has been deliberate in crafting its own path. Live trades of this nature, conducted by UK-domiciled firms using UK-issued stablecoins to settle UK-regulated digital assets, give that policy narrative operational credibility it previously lacked. Institutional stablecoin settlement: from pilot to practice. Perhaps the most important dimension of this development is what it signals about the readiness of sterling stablecoins as institutional settlement instruments. For years, stablecoin discussions within wholesale financial markets have focused primarily on dollar-denominated instruments - most notably those issued on public blockchains and used in decentralised finance contexts. The development of sterling stablecoins purpose-built for institutional capital markets use cases represents a structurally different category: regulated, currency-specific, and designed for integration with existing financial market plumbing rather than as an alternative to it. BCP Technologies' tGBP is positioned precisely in that institutional lane. Its use in the $GOVY settlement demonstrates that a sterling stablecoin can serve as a functional cash leg in a securities transaction - an outcome that should interest not only market participants but also the Bank of England, which has been studying whether private stablecoins can complement or interact with wholesale central bank digital currency infrastructure. What this means for the market. The completion of BCP Technologies' first live tokenised T-bill purchase via tGBP settlement is a small but structurally significant event for UK capital markets. It demonstrates that the building blocks of on-chain institutional settlement - a regulated tokenised asset, a sterling stablecoin, and a compliant execution venue - can be assembled and used in live conditions today. The next test will be whether volume follows, whether other institutions adopt comparable rails, and whether regulators move to provide the durable legal and supervisory framework that would allow this infrastructure to scale. For now, BCP Technologies and Archax have provided the market with something it has been waiting for: proof that on-chain sterling settlement of tokenised securities is not a future ambition but a present reality. Klaus hartmann. Banking infrastructure correspondent. Tracks the Bundesbank, the ECB and German Mittelstand financial systems. § Comments Open discussion no account needed