The UK-US Transatlantic Taskforce sets a practical agenda for cooperation on digital assets, wholesale markets and cross-border capital raising, supporting innovation, reducing fragmentation and strengthening competitiveness across financial and professional services.
This matters for the UK-based financial and related professional services industry. The US is the UK’s largest partner market, and both countries are home to globally significant financial centres. Closer regulatory cooperation can help reduce fragmentation, support innovation and make it easier for firms to raise capital, invest and serve clients across borders.
HM Treasury (HMT) and the US Treasury established the taskforce to identify where closer cooperation could deliver practical benefits while regulatory frameworks for digital assets and capital markets continue to evolve. Its recommendations were reported through the UK-US Financial Regulatory Working Group (FRWG) and published on 14 July 2026.
The recommendations focus on three areas where industry has long argued that closer UK-US alignment can make a real difference:
• First, the taskforce proposes a private sector-led group to test cross-border use cases for tokenised assets and share best practice. This welcome emphasis on experimentation and real-world application will help ensure policy development is informed by what works in practice. We expect to be actively involved in this work, which has been given a time-horizon of one year.
• Second, the UK and US authorities will seek common approaches to the regulatory treatment of tokenised assets. This includes settlement finality for tokenised securities and the potential use of stablecoins and tokenised money market funds as margin collateral at central counterparties. The joint statement on stablecoins also recognises the importance of a dynamic cross-border market and the need for greater confidence and clarity for market participants.
• Third, the recommendations recognise the importance of strengthening the links between UK and US capital markets more broadly. FCA and SEC staff will explore ways to facilitate cross-border capital raising, while also considering how transparency and interoperability can be supported as UK consolidated tapes come into effect. The CFTC and FCA will also explore converting existing temporary no-action relief for UK Swap Execution Facilities into a longer-term substituted compliance determination before it expires.
Together, these steps represent a positive and practical agenda. They closely align with the priorities set out in our ‘No Time to Lose: Reasserting UK leadership in financial and related professional services’ report, which emphasises that deeper international partnerships are essential to strengthening the UK’s competitiveness and supporting long-term growth.
We have played a leading role in convening industry to support the taskforce’s work collating recommendations from across the UK’s financial and related professional services industry. Our members attended a roundtable in London in January 2026 and met US counterparts during a return visit in February. In June, members of our US Market Advisory Group visited Washington, DC, and New York to raise awareness of the taskforce and share industry priorities with stakeholders including the US Treasury, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Congress and the Federal Reserve.
This work links heavily to the work being done by HM Government on a roadmap for modern digital government and the project led by Chris Woolard, HMT’s Wholesale Digital Markets Champion, which looks to create a tokenised wholesale financial markets system and accelerate innovation across the UK financial services industry. Given London’s role as a global financial centre, our work will continue to centre on the importance of building in interoperability to ensure businesses and consumers gain the benefits of these new technologies, and we avoid the costs of international regulatory fragmentation.
The focus now must be on delivery. Through our US Market Advisory Group, we will continue working with UK and US counterparts to help turn the taskforce’s recommendations into tangible benefits for firms, consumers and the wider economy. Effective implementation will strengthen the transatlantic marketplace, promote innovation and support deeper, more competitive capital markets on both sides of the Atlantic.