The Financial Services Regulatory Initiatives Forum has published the third edition of its Regulatory Initiatives Grid, which sets out upcoming regulatory initiatives for next 24 months.
Following the successful conclusion of a one-year pilot, the FCA has confirmed that the Forum will remain operative, with further iterations of the Grid to be published twice a year.
The members of the Financial Services Regulatory Initiatives Forum are: the Bank of England (including the Prudential Regulation Authority), the FCA, the Payment Systems Regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, the Pensions Regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office, and the Financial Reporting Council, with HM Treasury participating as an observer member.
By setting out the anticipated regulatory pipeline, the Grid helps financial services sector participants understand and plan for initiatives that could have a significant impact on their operations.
For the present, the FCA is not anticipating any significant changes to the format of the Grid, but it has invited firms to continue contacting FSRIFSecretariat@fca.org.uk with any feedback or suggestions.
Upcoming work highlighted in the latest version of the Grid includes:
- Eight new environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives
- The FCA and Bank of England’s work on transforming data collection
- HM Treasury’s Future Regulatory Framework Review
- The Pensions Regulator’s work on introducing a single code of practice to make its expectations simpler and easier to understand.
In total, the latest edition of the Grid details 128 initiatives, up from 111 in the previous edition, published in September last year. It’s organised by sector and includes a multi-sector chapter covering initiatives that span more than one sector. In the current Grid, these multi-sector initiatives include financial resilience, operational resilience, and conduct.
There are currently eight initiatives included in the insurance and reinsurance section, but only one of these (pricing practices) is likely to have a significant impact on the insurance distribution population. In general terms it’s well worth reviewing the relevant sectors of the Grid to ensure you are forewarned of where the regulators’ gaze to fall next.
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