TL;DR

Lloyds Banking Group is pushing for an overhaul of the UK financial system to put customer deposits on the blockchain. CEO Charlie Nunn says combining this with AI could completely redesign how Britons buy and sell homes, with a rollout target of 2027.

A Smartphone-Level Transformation

Speaking at the Financial Times’ Global Banking Summit, Nunn described the potential impact as comparable to the invention of the smartphone. “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,” he explained.

The UK’s largest mortgage provider plans to pair tokenised deposits with AI models to dramatically reduce homebuying timescales and eliminate various intermediaries from the conveyancing process.

How It Would Work

Nunn outlined a vision where the entire conveyancing, document sharing, value exchange and payments process could be built into smart contracts. “You can redesign buying and selling homes completely with those two technologies,” he said, noting that AI agents could guide customers through the process with or without a broker.

Tokenised deposits are representations of customer deposits on the blockchain, backed by institutional or retail funds. Advocates say the technology offers greater efficiency than traditional banking whilst providing more regulation than stablecoins.

Looking Forward

Lloyds hopes to roll out a generalised token system by 2027, having already piloted the technology system-wide across the UK. Nunn noted that the US Genius Act regulating stablecoins has been a “wake-up call” that will accelerate adoption globally. For UK businesses, he emphasised that digital finance advancements could help boost growth, though factors like high energy costs and regulatory burden continue to hamper investment.

Source: Financial Times