On 16 June 2022, the House of Commons’ Treasury Committee issued a new report regarding the Future of Financial Services Regulation.
Among other things, the report recommends:
- That there should be a secondary objective for the FCA and the PRA to promote long-term economic growth. When designing the new secondary objective, there should be some consideration for the ways in which financial services serve the ‘real economy’.
- The Treasury should continue to reject any calls for a growth and/or competitiveness objective to become a primary objective as this could increase any pressure on regulators to trade off competitiveness against resilience.
- The Treasury should require the FCA to have regard for financial inclusion in its rule-making. The FCA should also provide an annual report to Parliament on the state of financial inclusion in the UK.
- The FCA should consider how to improve its engagement with the poorest consumers, and must seek data on the issues vulnerable consumers experience directly.
- The PRA should consider where there is more that can be done to reduce the advantages from which large banks and insurers benefit through modelling their own capital requirements.
- The FCA should investigate whether there are opportunities to enable larger firms to undertake controlled, supervised experiments with innovative products.