The FCA has issued the following information.

We have published a Consultation Paper with proposals to replace the FCA Financial Resilience Survey with a new regulatory return during 2023. In doing so, we aim to:

• reduce the administrative and financial burden that an ad hoc survey places on firms
• increase the quality and consistency of financial resilience data received from our solo-regulated firms

We invite firms to respond to the questions in the Consultation Paper by Friday 2 December 2022.

We still require firms to complete the Financial Resilience Survey when requested to do so by us, until such a time that the new return comes into force.  

We’re planning to send this survey to the relevant firms in Tranche 2, some of which may be members of your associations, on one of the following dates:

Batch 1: to be sent on 18 October 2022 – response due by 8 November 2022

Batch 2: to be sent on 19 October 2022 – response due by 9 November 2022

Batch 3: to be sent on 20 October 2022 – response due by 10 November 2022

Batch 4: to be sent on 21 October 2022 – response due by 11 November 2022 

Firms in the Temporary Permissions Regime and Supervisory Run-off Regime can expect to receive this same survey, based on the same timeline above.

This latest survey follows on from our Covid-19 Impact Survey which we first sent firms in 2020 and have repeated five times since:

 In June we issued a seventh survey, retitling this data collection to ‘FCA Financial Resilience Survey’. This was to more accurately reflect its purpose of giving us baseline financial resilience information for our firms. The information we are asking firms to provide remains the same. 

We will send a warm up/introduction e-mail to all the firms at least one week prior to them receiving the survey.

This survey will include 9 questions in total, designed to give us information about the following important areas:

• Liquidity/cash availability and needs
• Recent financial performance
• Scale of business activity

The survey will be sent to all firms in the following Tranche 1 portfolios unless they satisfy specific exclusion criteria:

• Exchanges
• Asset management
• Wholesale brokers
• Wholesale banks
• Principal trading firms
• Wholesale (other)
• Life third party administrators
• Multilateral Trading Facilities and Organised Trading Facilities
• Alternatives
• Benchmarks
• Claims management
• Lloyd’s & London market intermediaries
• Retail mortgage lenders
• Mortgage third party administrators
• Lifetime mortgage providers
• Debt advice firms (excl. not-for-profit)
• Non-bank lenders
• Mortgage intermediaries
• Motor finance providers
• Retail finance providers
• Price comparison websites
• Corporate finance firms

Firms will be emailed a link to complete the survey online (not through RegData). It is designed to be easy to complete even via a mobile phone and we expect that most firms will not need more than an hour to complete it. The link that we will send will be unique to each firm. If firms need a different individual within their organisation (or a consultant) to answer and submit the survey, the link can be forwarded to the required person.

Completion of the survey is mandatory under section 165 of the Financial Services & Markets Act (FSMA) 2000. We may exercise our powers under FSMA for firms who do not respond. We have designed this survey so that it is quick and simple to complete. However, if due to exceptional circumstances a firm cannot access its financial information, they will need to ensure that they complete the questions where the relevant information is available. 

At the FCA, our core responsibilities include protecting consumers and enhancing the integrity of the UK financial markets. We know that financial stresses can put additional pressure on firms and so we are seeking to understand the effect the current financial climate is having on the finances of the firms we regulate and to better guide our supervisory actions.