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Sarah Breeden is Deputy Governor for Financial Stability at the Bank of England and a member of its Monetary and Financial Policy Committees.
Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden says there is no need to rush a digital pound, with a decision due before the end of 2026. Sterling stablecoins were under $6 million of a $308 billion market in late 2025. The private money she points to is still thin.
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Bank of England deputy governor Sarah Breeden called leveraging AI the "best pathway" to economic growth in an Atlantic Council interview. She also said an increasingly autonomous financial system could act in ways regulators do not expect.
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Bank of England swaps per-person holding limits on sterling stablecoins for a temporary £40 billion cap on each coin's issuance. Issuers now plan around how large their own coin may grow, under a central bank that says it will also hold part of every coin's reserves.
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Lloyds, NatWest, Barclays and HSBC settled Britain's first interbank transfers of tokenised sterling deposits in three pilot transactions. The Bank of England favours such tokens over private stablecoins, yet it still sketches a system where the two convert at par.
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Sarah Breeden, the Bank of England's deputy governor for financial stability, has given a public account of a long and benign period of AI use inside London firms. She is now watching agentic systems.
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The proposed secondary objective arrives with an explicit stability carve-out and an annual report to Parliament, which leaves June's reserve rule, not the statute, as the number that prices a sterling stablecoin business.
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The Financial Stability Board told finance ministers that leverage, concentration and AI cross-investment could turn a correction disorderly and cross-border. The arithmetic that matters is who has to sell what.
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