No retail gilt platform to diversify the sovereign's investor base

As defined-benefit pension schemes run off, the DMO has lost its captive long-dated buyer; 30-year term premia hit 2.45% against a 1.06% long-run average. Yet UK households cannot buy gilts directly from the state: purchases route through brokers and platforms with friction, and NS&I sells its own savings products, not gilts. There is no UK equivalent of US TreasuryDirect or Italy's retail BTP programmes, which raised tens of billions from households and stabilised demand. The DMO's approved-group retail access is vestigial; wholesale digital-gilt experimentation does not touch citizens.

A broader, stickier domestic investor base lowers term premia at the margin and reduces reliance on 'return-sensitive' leveraged foreign buyers, worth billions annually when debt interest is £126bn. It also gives savers direct access to the safe asset their taxes back.

A DMO/NS&I-operated retail gilt purchase-and-custody platform with low minimums, auction access and ISA eligibility, buildable as a fintech-style public product; a founder-shaped opportunity exists in the brokerage layer today.

// Build now: First artefact: low-friction ISA-eligible retail gilt brokerage (founder-shaped today); DMO/NS&I platform is the state end-state.

Diversifying the investor base only trims term premia at the margin, the product is buildable but unbuilt, and no dated trigger forces action this year.