Emma Lovett is a financial executive at J.P. Morgan, where she serves as an Executive Director and the Credit Lead for the Markets Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) team within the bank's Onyx Digital Assets business unit. She is a key figure in the bank's strategy to integrate blockchain technology and tokenization into traditional capital markets, with a particular focus on credit and fixed-income instruments. In addition to her role at J.P. Morgan, Lovett holds a significant industry leadership position as the Co-Chair of the International Capital Market Association's (ICMA) Fintech and Digitalisation Committee. ^{[1] [2]}​

Education

Lovett holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc, Hons) in Economics & Business Economics from the University of Southampton, which she attended from 2000 to 2003. ^[2]

Career at J.P. Morgan

Emma Lovett has worked at J.P. Morgan for over two decades, having joined the firm in August 2003. Her career has seen her progress from traditional capital markets roles to a leadership position in the bank's digital asset and blockchain initiatives. ^{[2] [3]}​

Head of Markets DLT - Credit

In her current role as Executive Director and Head of Markets DLT - Credit, Lovett leads a team within the Markets Digital Assets group. The team is focused on developing and implementing DLT and blockchain-based solutions for credit and other market instruments, aiming to build a new generation of financial market infrastructure that complements existing frameworks. ^[4] Her work is closely tied to J.P. Morgan's Onyx Digital Assets platform, which is used to develop and deploy the bank's blockchain-based products. Lovett's responsibilities include driving the evolution of tokenized assets within the Markets division and executing the strategy for tokenized credit products like bonds and repo transactions. ^{[2] [5]}​

Head of EMEA Deal Management, Fixed Income Syndicate

Prior to transitioning to her DLT-focused role, Lovett spent approximately 15 years in the Primary Markets business at J.P. Morgan. From around January 2008 to early 2024, she was the Executive Director and Head of Deal Management for the Fixed Income New Issues (Syndicate) in the EMEA region. In this position, she gained extensive expertise in the operational, technological, regulatory, legal, and settlement components of the new bond issuance lifecycle for both issuers and investors. This background in traditional market infrastructure has informed her subsequent work in digital assets. ^{[2] [3]}​

Key Projects and Initiatives

As a leader within Onyx Digital Assets, Lovett's work is connected to several of J.P. Morgan's significant DLT-based financial market initiatives.

Digital Bond and Debt Issuances

Lovett's team has been central to demonstrating the viability of issuing and managing traditional debt instruments on a blockchain.

• First Live Municipal Blockchain-Based Bond: Her Markets DLT team was involved in the first-ever live municipal bond issuance conducted on a blockchain in the U.S. capital markets. In November 2024, the firm's Digital Debt Service was used for an issuance for the City of Quincy, Massachusetts. The platform utilized J.P. Morgan's private blockchain infrastructure to achieve a digital end-to-end workflow from issuance to near real-time settlement. On the launch, Lovett stated, “We are excited that this landmark new issuance will start to pave the way for evolving distributed ledger technology infrastructure within the fixed income markets.” ^[6]
• Digital Debt Securities for Institutions: The Onyx platform has been used to facilitate significant institutional transactions, such as a $100 million digital debt security issuance for State Street in August 2025. Lovett commented that the platform represented a "significant advancement in digital issuance evolution" and provided clients with opportunities to explore blockchain for efficiency improvements. ^[7]
• Public Blockchain Integration: In December 2025, J.P. Morgan's Onyx division arranged a tokenized bond issuance for the financial services firm Galaxy Digital, which was settled on the public Solana blockchain. This project demonstrated the bank's exploration of integrating its institutional-grade services with public blockchain infrastructure. ^[8]

Tokenized Collateral Network (TCN)

Lovett's division also contributes to J.P. Morgan's Tokenized Collateral Network (TCN), an application running on the Onyx platform. The TCN allows institutional clients like BlackRock and Barclays to use tokenized assets, such as shares in money market funds, as collateral in derivatives and other transactions. The network enables the instantaneous transfer of this collateral, offering new operational efficiencies and unlocking liquidity that is often tied up in traditional settlement processes. ^{[2] [5]}​

Industry Leadership and Public Commentary

Lovett is an active voice in industry-wide discussions about the future of finance and the role of digital assets. She is a frequent speaker at major finance and technology conferences, including Consensus Hong Kong, the Singapore Fintech Festival, and Digital Asset Week (DAWeek). ^{[4] [3]}​

ICMA Fintech and Digitalisation Committee

Since January 2024, Lovett has served as the Co-Chair of the International Capital Market Association (ICMA)’s Fintech and Digitalisation Committee. In this capacity, she helps lead industry initiatives and discussions related to the adoption of digital technologies, DLT, and artificial intelligence in global capital markets. She co-chairs the committee alongside a representative from BlackRock. ^{[1] [2]}​

Views on Digital Assets

Through public speaking and media interviews, Lovett has provided insight into her perspective on the evolving digital asset landscape.

On the Stablecoin Market

Lovett has expressed caution regarding the proliferation of stablecoins. At a J.P. Morgan media roundtable in mid-2024, she noted the market was becoming "overcrowded" and questioned whether a definitive "killer use case" had emerged beyond speculation. She emphasized that J.P. Morgan's focus is on applications that solve real-world problems. ^[9] At a conference in June 2025, she reiterated this concern, stating, "I just think we all need to step back a little bit as an industry and think about whether we end up with an overcrowded market or more fragmentation." ^[10]​

On Deposit Tokens

In contrast to her views on the broader stablecoin market, Lovett has spoken in favor of deposit tokens, which are digital representations of commercial bank deposits on a blockchain. She has stated that J.P. Morgan views deposit tokens as a "more appropriate construction for a payment system" for institutional finance, primarily because they are direct liabilities of a regulated bank and are built within the existing banking framework. ^[5]​

On DLT in Capital Markets

Lovett advocates for the operational benefits of DLT in fixed-income markets. She has highlighted that a single, shared ledger for all participants in a trade increases transparency and reduces the need for costly and time-consuming reconciliation, particularly in cross-border transactions. She has also pointed to the potential of programmability in digital assets to automate processes like coupon payments, which could allow for more frequent payments and create new investment choices and risk profiles for investors. According to Lovett, “If parts of the process can be automated, one can efficiently change the frequency at which coupons can be paid, without increasing operational risk, therefore creating choice and a wider set of risk profiles for investors.” ^[5]​