The FCA’s Business Plan for 2015/16 – see previous article in this Regulatory Roundup – advises us that to help embed its new strategy the FCA has made some changes to its structure. Aside from an organisation chart (see Annex 3 of the Business Plan) there is not much detail save that ‘Supervision – Retail and Authorisations’ Division will be headed by Linda Woodall as acting Director and that ‘Supervision – Investment, Wholesale & Specialists’ Division will be led by Tracey McDermott.
The FCA’s April edition of its ‘Regulation round-up’ sheds a little more light on the changes.
We are informed that the ‘Supervision – Retail and Authorisations’ Division will cover retail banking; retail lending; general insurance and protection.
On the other hand the Division headed by Tracey McDermott will cover investment, wholesale banking and markets. There will be a new Investment Management department, which will bring together Asset Management and Wealth Management, with a number of cross-divisional teams that will support both Divisions.
We are promised that the restructuring is only part of the changes being made and that the FCA will be evolving its supervisory model over the next few months. Areas being looked at include how the FCA classifies firms and how it can make more use of cross-firm work to improve communication of examples of good and bad practice. Smaller firms will be pleased to read that a key aim is to ensure that the FCA increases its focus on engagement and education in relation to them.
