The FCA welcomes the Financial Services Bill introduced in Parliament, which will help to maintain high standards and provide greater clarity to firms.
We particularly welcome the Bill’s provisions to amend the Benchmarks Regulation, which is intended to help manage and direct an orderly wind-down of critical benchmarks such as LIBOR.
This is an important milestone, but we urge market participants to maintain their focus on the transition away from LIBOR by the end of 2021. We encourage those impacted to read our Statement and related publications[1] of 23 June for more information.
The Bill also includes a number of areas of interest to the FCA, including:
- the prudential regulation of investment firms (measures relating to the Investment Firms Prudential Review)
- a new route for overseas funds to market to retail investors through the introduction of a new Overseas Funds Regime
- a new framework for our regulatory relationship with Gibraltar
We will continue our work with HM Treasury on these issues during the Bill’s passage through Parliament.