Lords publishes FSMB amendments for Committee

The House of Lords has published a set of amendments to the FSMB for discussion in the Grand Committee, which is now scheduled to sit on 25 and 30 January and 1 February. The amendments include several amendments that were debated and either withdrawn or voted against in the Commons. The list comprises:

• an amendment to encourage debate on possible means of Parliamentary scrutiny of legislative changes resulting from Brexit;
• an amendment to encourage debate on how the Government will guarantee that the regulators’ new secondary objectives will not threaten their primary ones;
• a requirement for the regulators to report on their competitiveness and growth objective;
• amending the proportionality test so that the regulators must take into account the nature of and risk to the consumer, and the service or product being delivered, when imposing any new burden or restriction;
• requiring FCA to have regard to financial inclusion within its consumer protection objective and to report on financial inclusion annually;
• an amendment to encourage debate on whether the Consumer Duty should be replaced with a new duty of care;
• a requirement on the regulators to publish data on their regulatory performance for new applications and on existing authorised firms, approved persons and change in control applications;
• requiring the regulators to report annually on how they have considered the specific needs of mutual and co-operative providers;
• requiring the Consumer Panel to report annually to Parliament on how it considered FCA has performed;
• requiring the regulators to provide the CBA Panel with appropriate data and making the Panel’s recommendations public, and requiring the regulators to respond to recommendations within 30 days;
• requiring Treasury and FCA to conduct and publish a review of community need for, and access to, essential in-person banking services, and enable the FCA to ensure areas in need of essential in-person banking service have a minimum level of access to those services, and requiring Treasury to publish a policy statement setting out its policy decisions, including how far people could be expected to travel to access in-person services;
• requiring FCA to monitor and report on levels of cash acceptance across the UK;
• setting additional deadlines for authorisation KPIs and requiring the regulators to publish annual monitoring data;
• allowing individuals who have suffered loss because of a firm’s breach of the Consumer Duty to take legal action for damages against the firm;
• requiring Treasury to publish an updated Green Finance Strategy;
• compelling Treasury to publish a national strategy on financial fraud and update it at least every 5 years;
• require Treasury to lay regulations for FCA regulation of BNPL within 2 days of the passing of the Act; and
• an amendment to encourage debate on the progress towards provision of Sharia-compliant student funding.