FCA improves authorisation process
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has improved its authorisation process for financial services firms, as it continues with its programme of investment.
The City watchdog has beefed up its authorisation team, recruiting 125 additional permanent staff, up from 95 in October.
It said this has resulted in outstanding cases falling by almost 60 per cent to 5,500, down from their peak of 12,500 in December 2021.
“Our enhanced triage processes are reducing the time it takes to allocate a case to a case officer and allowing us to determine straightforward cases quicker,” the FCA said. “We are improving our communications with applicants, and we will further enhance this as our newly recruited colleagues gain experience.
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“We continue to apply increased scrutiny at the gateway, including a holistic assessment of firms’ business models. In 2022/23 the number of firms not authorised continues to be one in five, up from one in 14 in 2020/21.”
The regulator published an update on its operating service metrics for authorisations timelines, giving more detail on the period from April to September 2022.
It recorded an improvement in its metrics for seven out of 19 areas including approved persons applications.
However, it said it missed its target for new firm authorisations, but expects to meet this metric by the end of March.
It also missed its target for payments services and e-money authorisations, registrations and notifications, which it attributed to incomplete and poor-quality applications.
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“As we noted in the October 2022 update, the increasing complexity of some cases means that we will not always meet the target,” the FCA said. “In these cases, additional time is needed for greater scrutiny or engagement for good reasons, for example where required to meet our objectives effectively. Also, decisions are sometimes delayed at the request of the applicant.”
The FCA’s Authorisations Division is the first point of contact for firms and individuals wanting to carry out regulated activities or be registered with the authority.
“We operate a robust gateway to protect consumers and the integrity of markets but also recognise the importance of an efficient process to applicant firms and the competitiveness of the wider UK economy,” it said.
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