Regulatory enforcement mini-series part 3: FCA Enforcement strategy under the new "Bad Cop, Bad Cop" double act

Ashurst Legal Outlook Podcast

In the final part of our mini-series on regulatory enforcement, we reflect on how the Financial Conduct Authority is progressing under the stewardship of Therese Chambers and Steve Smart.

Welcome to episode three in our mini-series exploring new approaches from financial services regulators in the UK. In this final episode, we discuss the shift in enforcement strategies since new Therese Chambers and Steve Smart took the helm of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) last year.

Ashurst colleagues Nathan Willmott, Adam Jamieson and Andrew Sims reflect on the FCA’s more assertive approach, dubbed by Chambers as the ‘bad cop bad cop double act’.

While welcoming the regulator’s intention to speed up investigations and send strong signals to markets and consumers – Nathan, Adam and Andrew take a balanced view, acknowledging some of the downsides to the new approach too. They discuss the implications of the FCA’s focus on criminal actions and prosecutions (notably in the realm of investment fraud) and assess its ‘portfolio rebalancing’ exercise (reducing the backlog of cases and expediting the enforcement process). The conversation also covers the FCA’s targeting of areas like financial crime, market abuse, operational resilience, consumer duty enforcement action and technology.

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