A roundtable discussion with Sir Douglas Flint, chairman of the Digitisation Taskforce

The government has appointed Sir Douglas Flint, Chairman at abrdn to chair the Digitisation Taskforce which will look at ways to drive forward the modernisation of the UK’s shareholding framework. Considering the scale of market coordination and the varied expertise required to ensure digitisation delivers equitable outcomes, Sir Douglas Flint is leading a group of industry experts to determine the best approach for the UK.

The taskforce cuts across equity capital markets, shareholder communications, retail investment, market infrastructure, share registrars, and securities services.

Our event will be a workshop style discussion and will provide an opportunity to feed directly into its work. Sir Douglas is aiming to present his initial recommendations in the next few months.

The three key areas for discussion will be:

• Identifying immediate and longer term means of improving on the current intermediated system of share ownership;
• Eliminating the use of paper share certificates for traded companies and mandate the use of additional options to cheques for cash remittances; and
• Considering whether the arrangements for digitisation can be extended to newly formed private companies and as an optional route for existing UK private companies.

We expect the discussion to focus on three broad areas of technology, regulation, and market practice and participants to be a combination of executives and policy specialists from asset managers and investment banks (particularly those with a retail arm), market infrastructure, as well as securities services and registrars.