Sarah Pritchard, Executive Director at FCA, has spoken on the regulator’s role in encouraging growth. Key points in her wide-ranging speech included:
- FCA’s commitment to showing speed and agility, providing regulatory certainty and responding quickly to market changes;
- How FCA’s backlog for pending authorisations has reduced by 40% from last year;
- how it is trialling automated forms to be easier both for applicants to complete and FCA to assess;
- the benefits of outcomes-focussed regulation;
- the move towards now being able to give interpretations and ultimately regulatory certainty on matters which have stemmed from EU requirements (primarily MiFID 2);
- initiating a project to carry out a holistic review of advice and guidance within the investments market better to reduce regulatory burden – and it hopes to be able to progress this better given its expected new powers under the FSM Bill;
- success of the Regulatory Sandbox, with over 90% of the firms passing through it becoming authorised – and the planned support for 300 early and high growth firms;
- working with other regulators on making payments safe;
- the importance of the FSMB proposals on designation of critical third parties;
- strengthening market governance, and making primary and secondary markets work better;
- using data better to promote effective competition; and
- making regulatory changes where appropriate for regulation to work better – with an example of FCA’s Consumer Investments Strategy;