On 2 March 2020, HM Treasury published a letter (dated 27 February 2020) it had sent to Valdis Dombrovskis, European Commissioner for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union concerning the UK’s preparations for assessments of financial services equivalence.

Key points in the letter include:

• the UK is committed to meeting the end of June deadline for concluding its equivalence assessments;
• at the end of the transition period, the UK and EU will start from a position of regulatory alignment;
• the UK cannot see any reason why both it and the EU cannot deliver comprehensive positive findings to the June timeline; and
• the UK proposes the establishment of a dialogue for the exchange of information to support autonomous decision making on equivalence.