Regulated Liability Network

What is the RLN?

In recent years, there has been significant innovation within payments and new forms of digital money, including public (e.g. CBDC) and private (e.g tokenised deposit) initiatives. There could be advantages to promoting broader collaboration to design a unified approach for the future of regulated money in the UK, where all digital pounds are sufficiently smart and interoperable.

The Regulated Liability Network (RLN) is positioned as a financial market infrastructure (FMI), operating a shared ledger with central bank money, commercial bank money and electronic money on the same network. 

The purpose of the RLN is to create a new substrate for sovereign, regulated currencies that enables innovation around commercial bank money and is not just limited to central bank liabilities. Some of the core features of RLN would mean that it is ‘always on’, ‘programmable’ and can support ‘multi-asset’ settlement, thanks to the adoption of the distributed ledger technology (DLT). This would support new functionality for businesses and customers.

What is happening now?

In 2023, UK Finance ran a Discovery Phase for the UK Regulated Liability Network (RLN). Outputs and information about the Discovery Phase can be found here.

In 2024, UK Finance and 11 of members, supported by a strong team of vendors, ran an Experimentation Phase to build a simulation of the foundational RLN platform, capabilities, and functionality. The work also explored the relevant business, legal and regulatory considerations.

The UK RLN Experimentation Phase proved the thesis of a ‘platform for innovation’ across multiple forms of money, including existing commercial bank deposits and a shared ledger for tokenised commercial bank deposits.

We engaged with a range of innovators throughout that phase as part of our commitment to transparency and building a shared vision. We hosted an RLN 101 webinar on 16 April, and an Innovator Day on 16 May. 

In September 2024 we published the final reports of the UK Regulated Liability Network Experimentation Phase, which can be found here.

Hackathon – November 2024

In November 2024, we ran an industry RLN hackathon. There were 15 participant teams who created a range of innovative use cases and business applications that utilised the novel functionality of the RLN. Videos of all 15 presentations can be found here. We hope to run further hackathons in the future so watch this space.

Next steps and future phase of work

In 2025, UK Finance and its members will continue into the next phase of work on the RLN. A short summary of the proposed work can be found here. Broadly speaking, it will be a modular project focused on scoping, requirements gathering and then running a live pilot by the end of the year. 

This summary document above contains a link for firms who might be interested in participating in the project as members to register their interest. 

We will continue to keep the project open and transparent. If you have further questions about being involved, please contact RLN@ukfinance.org.uk.