In case you missed it, the FCA has been busy in recent weeks and has published its work programme for 2025-2026, its five-year strategy and next steps regarding the Consumer Duty.

Work programme

The FCA says that it "will be a smarter regulator, support growth, help consumers and fight crime."

It will make it easier for firms to test innovative products and support new firms applying for regulatory approval, for example, by improving its Regulatory Sandbox. 

The FCA's pre-application support service, which provides extra support for firms seeking regulatory approval, is also now extended to all wholesale, payments, and cryptoasset firms. It will also let more firms know that it is 'minded to approve' applications for authorisation when it thinks they can meet required standards. This is so that firms can seek investment with confidence that they can secure regulated status.

The FCA will also enable the Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System (PISCES) with a view to offering investors greater access to investment opportunities in private companies.

To encourage innovation, the FCA's AI Lab will work with firms to deepen understanding and support the use of AI solutions to drive growth and competitiveness in financial markets.

It also plans to bring "buy now, pay later" products within its regulatory regime. 

In addition, it will build a new data-led detection capability to increase identification of financial crime and take action to tackle it.

Finally, it is consulting on its fees and levies for the year ahead. It is proposing to increase minimum and flat rate fees, as well as application fees, by 2.5%.

Five-year Strategy

The FCA will focus on four priorities:

• Be a smarter regulator; predictable, purposeful and proportionate. The FCA will improve its processes and embrace technology to become more efficient and effective.
• Support sustained economic growth, by enabling investment, innovation and ensuring the continued competitiveness of the UK's world-leading financial services.
• Help consumers navigate their financial lives by working with industry to boost trust, product innovation and ensuring the right information and support is available for people to take financial decisions.
• Fight financial crime, focusing on those who seek to use the fact they are regulated to do harm. It will go further to disrupt criminals and support firms to be an effective line of defence.

It intends to significantly streamline how it sets its supervisory priorities, and review if it can stop requiring certain data returns. It will also digitise and simplify the authorisation processes.

As the FCA integrates the Payment Systems Regulator and many of its functions, it will build on Open Banking and launch Open Finance. 

Consumer Duty

Finally, the FCA has outlined the next steps in its Consumer Duty review. Its plans include:

• Making it easier to navigate regulations for consumer finance, investment and mortgages firms by planning to retire more than 100 pages of outdated guidance.
• Withdrawing hundreds of supervisory publications.
• Reviewing current prescriptive disclosure rules to give firms more flexibility to tailor communications to customers' needs and preferences, like online and digital transactions.
• Revisiting rules for businesses with customers outside the UK, for example, looking at whether insurance firms need to apply UK rules for their overseas customers.