On 12 March 2025, the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority (UK FCA) published a statement titled “Update on the FCA’s enforcement transparency proposals,” outlining s improvements in the pace of investigations and the regulator’s next steps regarding transparency in enforcement matters. The UK FCA confirmed that, following extensive consultation, it will not proceed with its proposal to shift from an exceptional circumstances test to a public interest test for announcing investigations into regulated firms due to a lack of consensus.
The regulator elaborated on areas of broad industry support, including reactively confirming investigations already in the public domain, issuing public notifications on potentially unlawful activities of unregulated firms and regulated firms operating outside the regulatory perimeter, and publishing anonymised details of issues under investigation. The UK FCA has committed to implementing these supported measures and will publish its final policy by the end of June 2025.
UK FCA’s enforcement transparency proposals aimed to enhance public awareness and accountability in regulatory investigations. But due to concerns over publicising investigations into regulated firms, the UK FCA will continue with the existing policy of only making public disclosures in exceptional circumstances. UK FCA Chief Executive Nikhil Rathi adding on this approach, stated: ‘We are speeding up our enforcement work. On our enforcement transparency proposals, we have always aimed to build a broad consensus. Considerable concerns remain about our proposal to change the way we publicise investigations into regulated firms, so we will stick to publicising in exceptional circumstances as we do today. We will implement changes which have commanded wider support and which we believe will help support our efforts to protect consumers from harm.’
UK FCA and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) provided an update on their joint consultation on diversity and inclusion in regulated firms, initially launched in 2023. Due to the broad range of feedback received and anticipated legislative developments, both regulators have decided not to advance these proposals at this time, in order to avoid placing additional burdens on firms.
The UK FCA added that its final enforcement transparency policy will be published by the end of June 2025. The regulator is taking additional time to refine its approach to non-financial misconduct to ensure proportionality and alignment with upcoming legislation. A separate update on this matter will also be provided by the end of June 2025.
(Source: https://www.fca.org.uk/news/statements/update-fca-enforcement-transparency-proposals)
