The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has released its Business Plan for the 2024-2025 financial year, outlining a comprehensive work program to improve consumer and market outcomes.

This plan marks the final year of the FCA’s three-year strategy to prevent serious harm, set higher standards, and promote competition in the financial sector.

FCA to Focus on Consumer Protection, Market Integrity, and UK Competitiveness

The FCA’s priorities for the upcoming year include protecting consumers by ensuring firms meet the high standards set by the Consumer Duty, supporting long-term financial wellbeing through the Advice Guidance Boundary Review, and ensuring pension products deliver value for money.

The regulator also aims to contribute to UK competitiveness and growth by improving the attractiveness and reach of UK wholesale markets, supporting firms to invest, innovate, and expand through its innovation services, and streamlining the authorization process for firms.

“We’ve already made significant progress in delivering against the bold vision we set out in our strategy two years ago, including the game-changing introduction of the Consumer Duty and proposing the most far-reaching reforms to wholesale market regulation and the listing regime in decades,” Nikhil Rathi, the Chief Executive of the FCA, commented.

In addition, the FCA plans to build on its progress towards becoming a world-class data-led regulator by automating more of its analytics tools to detect and respond to consumer harms faster and working with firms to deploy artificial intelligence safely.

The FCA’s assertive approach has already yielded results, with the regulator removing over 10,000 potentially misleading adverts in 2023 and sending out 2,243 warnings about unauthorized firms and individuals. It also more than doubled the number of firm permissions canceled compared to the previous year for failing to meet its minimum standards.

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