With a swathe of new announcements, commitments and priorities focussed on growth, the UK’s ambition is clear, even if the end goal still seems elusive for many of the nation’s core industries. With the financial services sector a significant contributor to the UK economy and integral to its long-term growth, this session will explore the guiding principles and policies needed to deliver sustainable, inclusive growth for the sector and secure the UK’s competitiveness as an international financial centre.

In this session, we will discuss the shape and direction of the UK securities finance market, focussing in on the key regulatory, business and product drivers to watch in 2025. From the domestic approach of ‘Regulating for Growth’ to the influence of geopolitics, our panellists will look at this through the lens of UK banks and non-bank financial institutions, as well as other key stakeholders. Topics will include Basel III, T+1 and Operational Resilience.

The digitisation of almost every aspect of our industry signals a new frontier for the UK financial services sector. Developing technologies such as DLT, tokenisation and AI have the potential to make our markets more efficient, transparent, resilient and ultimately competitive. With regulators seemingly on-board, many of these novel developments could be within touching distance. In this session, we will discuss the digital landscape, focussing on recent and relevant developments, including the GMSLA Digital Annex, the FCA’s Digital Securities Landscape, and the future of tokenised assets.

This final session will reflect on many of the themes and threads of the earlier sessions and consider what this means for the future outlook of the UK financial services sector more broadly.