Regulators of UK, Singapore, Switzerland and Japan launch collaborative effort to explore digital asset use cases
Policymakers of four countries – Singapore, the UK, Japan and Switzerland – have come together in a joint initiative to explore new use cases for digital assets.
The FCA joins MAS’ Project Guardian
Project Guardian is helmed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) with participation from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Financial Services Agency of Japan (FSA) and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA).
As part of Project Guardian, MAS has partnered up with 15 financial institutions to conduct digital asset pilots in areas of fixed income, foreign exchange and asset management.
“These pilots have demonstrated the potential to reap significant market and transaction efficiencies from the use of tokenisation,” MAS says in a statement.
“As the pilots grow in scale and sophistication, there is a need for closer cross-border collaboration among policymakers and regulators.”
Through the joint collaboration, the regulators aim to share knowledge and facilitate discussions on the benefits and risks of asset and fund tokenisation.
The group also aims to discuss legal, policy and accounting elements for digital assets, develop common standards and best practices, and conduct regulatory sandboxes for pilots.
“Through this partnership, we hope to promote the development of common standards and regulatory frameworks that can better support cross border interoperability, as well as sustainable growth of the digital asset ecosystem,” says Leong Sing Chiong, deputy managing director, markets and development, MAS.
Sarah Pritchard, executive director of markets and international at FCA, adds that the UK’s asset management sector, which is the second largest in the world, sees “significant potential in the use of distributed ledger technology to drive innovations, efficiencies, and enhanced value for customers”.
