Digitisation Taskforce - July 2025
The Digitisation Taskforce, chaired by Sir Douglas Flint, has delivered its final recommendations for modernising the UK shareholding framework.
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On 15 July the Digitisation Taskforce published its final report, recommending a staged approach to removing paper share certificates and ultimately moving to a fully intermediated system of shareholding in the UK. The government has accepted the recommendations made in the report and set out in its response how it intends to take these forward. In the first stage of the digitisation process, current paper share registers will be replaced by digitised versions – maintaining the service that paper shareholders receive today but in digital form. The report recommends this should happen before the end of 2027, with an industry Technical Group finalising the details of how this would be implemented.
Then over the course of this Parliament the government, regulators and the Technical Group will work to improve the intermediated system to ensure that shareholders can exercise their rights effectively and efficiently through intermediaries. The report recommends a package of measures to achieve this.
Once these improvements have been made, all shares should transition into the intermediated system. The report recommends that the Technical Group considers how best to deliver this, particularly taking into account the needs of vulnerable and older investors. As part of the Terms of Reference for the Technical Group, the government will set criteria which should be met before this final step takes place.