The FCA has written to certain trade associations including the Managing General Agents Association (MGAA) and the Association of Professional Compliance Consultants (APCC) in relation to a feedback survey that the FCA is planning to issue about its series of COVID-19 Impact Surveys (sometimes referred to as the financial resilience surveys). The resilience surveys were first issued to ‘tranche 1’ in June 2020 and then to ‘tranche 2’ in August 2020, and have been re-issued four further times to both tranches.
Rather than issuing a further survey now, the FCA will instead issue a “short feedback survey”, and then re-issue another round of resilience surveys early next year. The new feedback survey will seek to collect anonymous feedback on the financial questions (cash balances, liquidity, capital) within the Covid-19 Impact Survey.
The FCA will e-mail the feedback survey to firms between 22nd October – 12th November 2021. This is a voluntary survey and, as such, firms are under no obligation to complete it; the FCA would like to ask a few questions about firms’ experience to improve the process going forward.
Firms will be e-mailed a link to complete the survey online (not through RegData). It is designed to be easy to complete even via a mobile phone and the FCA expects that most firms will not need more than an hour to complete it. If firms need a different individual within their organisation (or a consultant) to answer and submit the survey, the link can be forwarded to the required person.
The FCA remains aware that firms will be concerned about phishing e-mails and scams. When they receive the survey, the FCA asks that firms check it is from either FCA@fcanewsletters.org.uk or an @fca.org.uk email address.
Please note the content of the FCA’s communication, as above, and perhaps take the opportunity to provide anonymous feedback to the FCA if you receive the feedback survey.