The United States and the United Kingdom have reaffirmed their shared commitment to closer financial regulatory cooperation and policy alignment on artificial intelligence (AI) and digital assets at a bilateral working group held in London last month.
On July 8, the 13th official meeting of the U.K.-U.S. Financial Regulatory Working Group (FRWG) was hosted by HM Treasury in London, where senior government officials and regulators from both nations emphasized close, ongoing cooperation, focused on several key themes, including economic and financial stability, digital finance and operational resilience, regulatory modernization, and the recent recommendations of the U.S.-U.K. Transatlantic Taskforce for Markets of the Future (TTMF).
“Both U.S. Treasury and HM Treasury emphasized the importance of modernizing regulation and protecting financial stability to boost economic growth,” read a joint statement. “Participants discussed issues related to digital finance, emphasizing broad support for the responsible use and growth of digital assets and digital financial innovation globally.”
The Working Group was formed in September 2018 to deepen bilateral regulatory cooperation and promote financial stability, investor protection, and efficient markets.
During the latest meeting, senior Treasury officials from both countries were joined by representatives from the Bank of England (BoE), Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The various authorities reportedly provided updates on their respective regulatory regimes for digital assets, including stablecoins, with U.S. authorities updating on the implementation of the GENIUS Act for stablecoins and on the much-anticipated digital asset market structure bill (CLARITY Act), which remains stuck in legislative limbo, still seven votes short of passage in the U.S. Senate, and some suggesting it is running out of time.
Exact details of how the discussions panned out were sparse, and no new policy measures emerged from the meeting, but the joint statement underscored a shared commitment to regulation that supports the digital asset industry while maintaining consumer protection and financial stability, which largely describes the impetus of the GENIUS Act, CLARITY Act, and the U.K.’s proposed regulatory framework, recently finalized by the FCA and BoE.
Beyond digital assets, the Working Group also exchanged views on approaches to current economic trends, market conditions, capital market developments, non-bank financial intermediation (NBFI), and AI in financial services.
On the latter, the pair emphasized the need to support responsible adoption across the financial sector.
“Both U.S. and U.K. authorities discussed ways to work together and with the financial services industry to realize the potential of the technology, while mitigating potential risks,” read the joint statement. “Each side also shared information about its approach to enhance cybersecurity and operational resilience in the financial sector.”
Another major topic for discussion was the TTMF’s recommendations to advance U.K.-U.S. financial services collaboration, announced earlier in July.
Taskforce backs digital assets
During U.S. President Donald Trump’s state visit to the U.K. on September 16, 2025, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, and the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, announced the creation of the TTMF to develop recommendations that will advance U.K.-U.S. financial services collaboration, focusing on digital assets and capital markets.
“The United States and the UK should leverage their positions as leading global financial centres to actively shape the development of digital asset markets and next-generation financial infrastructure,” read the joint statement. “The TTMF has identified targeted steps that can improve connectivity, enable more efficient and transparent markets, and inform potential alignment of regulatory frameworks.”
The task force committed to report back to both finance ministries with initial recommendations for collaboration on capital markets and digital assets, which it duly did on July 14, along with a joint statement from the U.S. and U.K. Treasuries and a separate joint statement on stablecoins.
The list of ten recommendations included a number focused on boosting the tokenization sector in both countries. Specifically, engaging a private-sector-led group focused on industry experimentation and testing of cross-border use cases for tokenized assets, seeking to identify common approaches to the regulatory treatment of tokenized assets, and working together to support financial innovation through robust policy frameworks for digital financial services.
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On stablecoins, the Taskforce aimed to promote convergence between the countries’ two regimes and to support dynamic cross-border stablecoin activity. To this end, it affirmed ten views on the asset class, based on the shared assumption that “stablecoins are an important vehicle for innovation in digital money.”
The notable affirmations included that stablecoins held out as money should be fully backed, on at least a one-to-one basis, by high-quality, liquid assets; that reserve, liquidity, and other prudential requirements for stablecoins should seek to mitigate risks and avoid unnecessary fragmentation, through setting high standards for the custody, segregation, and protection of stablecoin reserves; and that domestic regulatory and supervisory regimes should emphasize the importance of formal mechanisms to enable cross-border stablecoin activity.
The two Treasuries also committed to stimulating competition and innovation “through policies that facilitate the coexistence and circulation of different forms of digital money solutions,” and to regulatory approaches that “promote innovation and resilience, without imposing burdensome constraints that undermine commercial viability, create barriers to entry, or hinder competition.”
According to this week’s FRWG statement, the countries still intend to follow through with these commitments, which they said are “laying the foundations for continued U.S. and U.K. leadership in digital assets and capital markets.”
The Working Group plans to reconvene in early 2027 to continue its ongoing biannual dialogue.
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