The FCA has advised as follows:

Last year we launched a new three-year strategy to improve outcomes for consumers and in markets throughout the UK. As our remit is broad and growing, the strategy prioritises resources to prevent serious harm, set higher standards and promote competition.

Today we’ve published our Business Plan for 2023/24, which sets out our priorities for the second year of this strategy.

Our strategy was designed to be flexible and given changes to the external environment, including the soaring cost of living and increased volatility in markets, we are accelerating our work in four areas over the next year through further investment and increased resources:

• Putting consumers’ needs first including embedding the Consumer Duty and continuing to support consumers with the rising cost of living.
• Strengthening the UK’s position in global financial markets to support growth and innovation in the UK, while maintaining high standards, including continuing to reform our listing rules, implementing the wholesale market review and bringing forward proposals on asset management regulation.  We are further investing in our data capabilities to ensure effective market oversight.
• Preparing financial services for the future, including embedding our new secondary objective on international competitiveness and growth and implementing the outcomes of the Future Regulatory Framework review and Edinburgh Reforms.
• Reducing and preventing financial crime and fraud, including increasing our use of data and proactive supervisory work to crack down on financial crime and continuing to help consumers spot the signs of scams through our ScamSmart campaign.

Alongside these four areas, we will continue to deliver against all our commitments in the strategy.

Much of our work to deliver against our commitments in the strategy is well underway and we’ve made considerable progress to become a more proactive, assertive and data-led regulator.

Alongside our strategy, we published the outcomes and performance metrics against which we can be held accountable. Our Annual Report, which will be published later this year, will report on our progress against these metrics. 

We have also today published published our consultation on our fees and levies for the year ahead. In recognition of the pressure firms are under, the FCA is proposing to freeze application fees, and the minimum fees firms pay which affects more than 17,000 FCA-regulated firms.