UK investment funds receive permission to tokenize assets

The Investment Association reported that a working group of the UK Treasury and the FCA have agreed on the use of blockchain in the financial asset management industry.

Collaborative work between the Treasury, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and representatives from leading investment firms such as BlackRock has resulted in a roadmap for tokenizing the assets of UK investment funds.

According to the Investment Managers Association, the roadmap outlines a fundamental fund tokenization model that is consistent with the existing UK legal and regulatory framework.

Under the proposed model, funds authorized by the FCA will be able to use tokenization for securities sales and redemption transactions, provided they meet certain criteria. These include requirements such as holding investment portfolios consisting solely of underlying assets, as well as maintaining traditional valuation and settlement processes.

Earlier, UK Minister of Finance and Economy Andrew Griffith called on the FCA to be more lenient towards the activities of cryptocurrency companies.