By Liam Edwards

The FCA has published a speech on regulation as a catalyst for economic growth, given by Sarah Pritchard (Executive Director, Markets) at the City and Financial Global Summit on 27 September 2022. The speech is available in full here.

Key points of the speech include:

• the centrality of consumer protection and maintaining market integrity, and their importance to economic growth;
• the FCA’s efforts to minimise the regulatory burden without reducing UK standards;
• the work done over the last year to reduce the pending authorisations backlog by 40%, and the FCA’s trialling of automatic forms; and
• possible reform to investment advice rules to ensure that mass market consumers have access to specialist knowledge for lower-risk products.

Ms Pritchard also discussed the FCA’s use of its regulatory sandbox, the Financial Services and Markets Bill giving the FCA (along with the Bank of England and the PRA) oversight of the resilience of services provided by third parties, and the lessons learned following the March 2022 nickel market volatility that resulted in the London Metal Exchange suspending trading, among a variety of other topics.