PRA has published its consultation on fees and levies for 2020/21.
The consultation covers:
- the fee rates to meet the Annual Funding Requirement, which has increased by 8% from the current year, primarily because of work on operational resilience and climate changes as well as increases in investment activities, technological developments and an increase in PRA pension costs;
- fees for specific businesses: PRA will keep the 11% discount for small insurers outside the scope of Solvency 2 and will simplify the minimum fee rules for non-Directive life insurers, who will now all pay the same lower minimum fee of £215;
- all fee blocks except the minimum will see an increase of around 9%;
- PRA proposes to recover £11.6m for an EU Withdrawal fee split over all fee blocks except the minimum fee block and insurance SPVs;
- updating hourly rates for special project fees for restructuring;
- simplifying fees for VOP transactions so that a fee is only payable for complex applications; and
- explaining how PRA plans to distribute a surplus from the 2019/20 AFR and distribute the retained penalties from that year.
It asks for comments by 15 May with a view to implementing the changes on 7 July.