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

As defined-benefit pension schemes run off, the Debt Management Office has lost its captive long-dated buyer, and 30-year term premia hit 2.45 per cent against a long-run average of 1.06. 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 rather than gilts. No UK equivalent exists 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, and 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 a year when debt interest runs at over £110bn. It also gives savers direct access to the safe asset their taxes back.

A retail gilt purchase-and-custody platform operated by the DMO and NS&I, 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 trims term premia at the margin, and the product is buildable, unbuilt, and undated.