We are improving our authorisations process to make it quicker and easier for firms and people to apply.

Changes to our forms mean we can collect higher quality data and applications, while responding quickly to protect consumers from emerging harms.

We’ve listened to feedback that many of our application forms can be complicated and difficult to use.

We are improving them starting with Form A. This will support quicker assessments and determinations.

When we've completed the roll-out of improvements to Form A, we intend to make changes to other application forms. You can read more in this web blog.

On 29 September, we confirmed our reforms to the multi-occupancy buildings insurance market to support leaseholders. Following our consultation earlier this year, new rules will come into force at the beginning of next year requiring insurers to make sure that their policies provide fair value to leaseholders, and to provide important information about their policies and its pricing, and detail of any commission paid.

This follows our review of the multi-occupancy buildings insurance market, which found that leasehold buildings insurance premiums had risen significantly since the Grenfell tragedy, with leaseholders facing substantially higher costs and poor value.

From December 2023, if you have Appointed Representatives (ARs) you must confirm their details when completing your annual Firm Details Attestation (FDA).

You must attest the details of all ARs including: 

• if they have more than one principal 
• their details haven’t changed from last year or have been recently updated

FDAs must be completed within 60 business days of your Annual Referencing Date (ARD). Failure to report will incur a late return notification, £250 late return fee, and possible enforcement action.

Find out more about what AR information you need to report to us and how.

From 1 December, all principal firms will need to send us regular data about their Appointed Representatives (ARs) using the REP205 form in RegData.

When to report your AR data will depend on your account referencing date (ARD). Failure to report on time will incur a late return notification and a £250 administration fee.

Prepare for the changes now – read our REP025 FAQs.

We’ve reviewed our 2019 rules for SME access to the Financial Ombudsman Service, to assess whether they should be further extended to larger businesses.

The current thresholds provide access to the ombudsman service to more than 99% of the 5.6 million private sector businesses in the UK.

Following the feedback that we’ve received, we’ve decided this level of coverage remains appropriate and that it would not be proportionate to extend access to larger SMEs.

Read the full findings from our review.

On 20 September 2023, we hosted a GFIN Greenwashing TechSprint Showcase day. This was an opportunity for participating firms and regulators to showcase their solutions to a panel of judges, comprised of industry experts, subject matter professionals and innovators.

For the past 3 months we have successfully led a group of 15 international regulators and 13 innovative firms to collaboratively identify and develop technological solutions to help regulators, or the market, more effectively tackle or mitigate the risks of greenwashing in financial services. We have done this by leveraging our position as Chair of the Global Financial Innovation Network and as an innovative regulator.

We would like to congratulate the winners.

The participating firms and regulators will retain their access to the FCA Digital Sandbox to keep iterating and collaborating on their solutions.

From 8 October 2023, a change in legislation brought cryptoasset promotions into our remit. Now, all cryptoasset firms wanting to market to UK consumers must either be registered or regulated by the FCA, or have their marketing approved by a regulated firm. This change helps ensure crypto marketing is clear and prominent risk warnings are in place.

Ahead of the October deadline, we provided firms with examples of good and poor practice on how to comply with the new rules.

Within the first 24 hours of the rules coming into force, we issued 146 alerts about cryptoasset promotions.

In September, we published our final rules confirming the introduction of a gateway for firms who approve financial promotions for unauthorised persons.

Firms wishing to continue approving adverts will need to apply for this permission between 6 November 2023 and 6 February 2024, ahead of the new rules coming into force on 7 February 2024.

To help firms prepare, we have also published information on applying to approve financial promotions.

In August 2022, we strengthened our advertising rules for firms promoting high-risk investments to retail clients.

Following a review of how a sample of firms are complying with these rules, we have published examples of the good and poor practice we identified. Firms in the wider sector should consider these findings and make any necessary changes to their own practices.

The Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee (JROC) has welcomed Open Banking Ltd.’s (OBL) submission of 2 new data collection frameworks on the themes of ‘Levelling up availability and performance’ and ‘Mitigating the risks of financial crime’.

The frameworks are a first step to realising the full potential of open banking in the UK. The data collected from ecosystem participants will help increase the evidence base for the performance of APIs and the levels of fraud (and later financial crime) in open banking. We encourage firms to participate by submitting their data.

This month we published the key findings from our review of payment account providers’ systems and controls against money mule activity.

With fraud currently accounting for 40% of all crime, the ease with which fraudsters cash out proceeds through mule accounts continues to be a problem. Our review covered all aspects of firms’ response to mules, including controls at onboarding, monitoring and reporting.

Our report outlines examples of good practice, areas for improvement, and our expectations around how firms manage the risks of money mule accounts in a proportionate way.

In February, we published a Discussion Paper on updating the UK asset management regime. In line with the Government’s Smarter Regulatory Framework for replacing retained EU law, we expect core asset management regulations to move to our Handbook over the course of 2024. Having reviewed responses to the DP, we plan to prioritise:

• making the regime for alternative fund managers more proportionate 
• updating the regime for retail funds 
• supporting technological innovation 

More details are in a speech by our Chair, Ashley Alder.

In prioritising we have considered how to better tailor the future regime to the UK market while retaining interoperability with other international regimes and international standards.

All firms must ensure that we have their correct information by checking, amending (if required) and confirming their firms details at least annually, using Connect, in line with SUP 16.10 reporting requirements. Some of this information is on the Financial Services Register. 

We have written to all dual regulated firms (firms supervised by the FCA and the PRA) to inform them that they will need to attest to their firm details within 60 business days of their Accounting Reference Date (ARD), from 1 December 2023. 

For more information, visit our website.

ADM Investor Services International Limited (ADMISI), a broker, has been fined £6,470,600 for inadequate anti-money laundering systems and controls.

The nature of ADMISI’s business and client base presented potentially high levels of money laundering risk because of its business model, the geographical location of its customers, the proportion of its business involving high-risk clients and because it had Politically Exposed Persons as clients.

Read the Final Notice: ADMISI.

We have published the most recent data on the volume of complaints reported by firms during the first half (H1) of 2023. We use complaints data to help assess how well firms are treating their customers and how their performance changes over time.

Key findings include:

• In 2023 H1, financial services firms received 1.88m opened complaints, an increase of 5% from 2022 H2 (1.80m).
• The product groups that experienced an increase in their opened complaint numbers from 2022 H2 to 2023 H1 were the following: decumulation & pensions (20%), investments (18%), insurance & pure protection (6%), & banking and credit cards (3%).

Visit our website for further information and data visualisations.

Webinar – 30 October 12:00

We are consulting on proposals to achieve a more diverse and inclusive financial services industry. Our proposals support progress by setting minimum standards, including:  

• clarifying expectations on non-financial misconduct
• establishing reporting and disclosure requirements for larger firms that will allow both us and firms to better monitor progress

The full consultation paper can be found on our website. At this webinar we will discuss why diversity and inclusion (D&I) are regulatory concerns, as well as giving an overview of the regulatory D&I framework we propose in our paper. There will be an opportunity to put your pre-submitted and live questions to our panellists.