Sam Woods’ Mansion House speech of 17 October 2024 follows in which he discusses aspects of the new secondary competitiveness and growth objective.

FCA has published a webpage, a blog piece by David Stallibrass, and a research note that summarises the current evidence base connecting financial services regulation to economic growth and identifies areas for future research.

In this speech of 26 September 2024, Shoib Khan sets out measures PRA is taking in its oversight of the insurance sector to deliver on its new secondary competitiveness and growth objective, discusses how PRA is taking a differentiated supervisory approach for the different segments of the insurance market, and announces changes to be consulted on relating to the ISPV regime and catastrophe bonds.

CMA has published its final decision that changes of circumstance have taken place which means that Part 3, article 29 and Part 1 of Schedule 4 of the Home Credit Market Investigation Order 2016 are no longer appropriate and should be revoked by means of a variation order.  CMA is now consulting on its Notice of Intention to Vary and on the proposed variation.  Responses should be received by 21 October 2024.

The report includes recommendations with regard to the Capital Markets and Banking Unions.

FCA intends to launch a market study into how pure protection insurance products are sold following concerns that competition is not working well in the market, that that the design of commission arrangements may not allow firms to deliver good outcomes to policyholders and some products may be providing poor value.  FCA is inviting comments on a proposed ToR for the market study.  Responses are required by 11 October 2024.

PSR notes that CMA is consulting on changes to settlement discounts available for non-cartel and abuse of dominance conduct under the Competition Act 1998.  PSR proposes to align its guidance on settlement discounts with CMA’s decision following the consultation and asks for responses with regard to payment specific views to be received by 13 September 2024.

It has been announced that the Committee, which has been reappointed by HoL, will resume its inquiries into (i) FCA’s CP24/2 on publicising enforcement investigations and (ii) the secondary international competitiveness and growth objective given to FCA and PRA.  Responses to calls for evidence are required by 11 October 2024 and 29 November 2024 respectively.

BoE’s Court of Directors commissioned its Independent Evaluation Office to conduct an evaluation of PRA’s approach to its new objective.  IEO made nine detailed recommendations, grouped into four broad themes: clarifying PRA’s vision and desired culture for supporting competitiveness and growth across all its activity; ensuring staff have a consistent understanding of the new objective, and what they have to do to support it; harnessing intelligence from inside and outside BoE to help inform policy making and prioritisation, and refining transparency and oversight mechanisms.

PRA has published its Annual Report, which includes details of the regulator’s report during the period and a summary of its Secondary Competition Objective and the Secondary Competitiveness and Growth Objective introduced by FSMA 2023.  The full competition report may be downloaded via the second link below.