On 11 January 2023, the FCA published its latest quarterly Skilled Person data for the period July to October 2022 (Q2 2022/23). There were 11 reports commissioned during this time (following nine in the first quarter of the year). This is broadly in line with the number of reports commissioned last year (when 38 reports were commissioned for the full year), which at the time had represented a general reduction in the overall number of reports from recent previous years – for example, for 2020/21, 68 reports were commissioned.
In terms of areas of focus:
- there is a continuing trend of high numbers of reports in the retail sector (around two thirds in this quarter);
- so far for 2022/23, there appears to be a drop in the relative number of investment management reports with these making up 10% of cases so far in 2022/23, having represented over 25% of the reports commissioned last year; and
- looking at the Skilled Person lots, overall for 2022/23 so far most of the reports are in Lot C, Controls and Risk Management Frameworks (8 out of 20 reports).
The latest data does not contain any costs information (which we anticipate will be provided in the annual report), but of note the average cost of a Skilled Person report rose last year. The average report cost figure for 2021/22 was approximately £992,000, as compared to around £579,000 for 2020/21 and around £534,000 for 2019/20.
The FCA’s latest data can be found here.