On 9 November 2021, the Financial Markets Law Committee issued a paper that seeks to identify legal uncertainties within the UK’s bank ring-fencing regime, explains their impact on market participants and makes recommendations on how each might be resolved.

Some of the key legal uncertainties identified in the paper concern: the definition of core services, the meaning and ambit of ring-fencing transfer schemes, excluded activities not subject to the regime, the prohibition on incurring exposures to a range of financial institutions and exceptions to it, liquidity management for ring-fenced banks, the identification of the ‘account holder’, tax exposures and the application of the regime to trade finance products.