The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has revealed its five-year plan, which will focus on four priorities.
The FCA is a unique regulator as it holds a competition mandate: it must enable competition. Otherwise, the regulator pursues consumer protection and market integrity.
Since 2023, the FCA has had a mandate to facilitate the international competitiveness and growth of the UK economy in the medium to long term.
As for its new plan, the FCA outlines the following objectives.
- Be a smarter regulator; predictable, purposeful, and proportionate. The FCA will improve its processes and embrace technology to become more efficient and effective.
- Support sustained economic growth, by enabling investment, innovation and ensuring the continued competitiveness of the UK’s world-leading financial services.
- Help consumers navigate their financial lives by working with industry to boost trust, product innovation and ensuring the right information and support is available for people to take financial decisions.
- Fight financial crime, focusing on those who seek to use the fact they are regulated to do harm. It will go further to disrupt criminals and support firms to be an effective line of defence.
The UK has emerged as a top global Fintech ecosystem. This would not have occurred without an element of support from regulators and other policymakers. This explicit support is in recognition of the vital nature of financial services to the UK economy.
Nikhil Rathi, Chief Executive of the FCA, commented on their objectives, noting their four priorities reinforce one another and they want to become a “smarter regulator, support growth, help consumers, and fight crime.”
The regulator reported that it plans to invest in technology, people, and systems while it adopts new approaches to better handle the 100,000 cases its supervisors assess every year.
Recently, it was reported that the Payments Systems Regulator (PSR) will be rolled up into the FCA, so its responsibilities will grow. The FCA adds that “many of the PSR functions will “build on the success of Open Banking and launch Open Finance. This will allow for more seamless data-sharing, which could unlock product innovation and deliver lower costs, more choice, and better information for consumers.”