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PIMFA WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN | 14 February 2022 Dear Nigel,
Welcome to the PIMFA Bulletin; grab a coffee and take 10 minutes to read the latest news impacting you and your firm.
PIMFA and the Online Safety Bill
PIMFA has spent the last year working in collaboration with Which?, City UK, UK Finance, The Money and Mental Health Policy Institute and 12 other consumer groups, charities and trade associations to lobby Government for Investment Fraud, and financial crime more generally, to be included within the upcoming Online Safety Bill. A lot of work has gone into the campaign and it has won the support of many stakeholders, among them notable MPs and various parliamentary select committees, as well as several national newspapers.
The campaign has consistently called for paid-for online adverts to be brought within scope of the Online Safety Bill as this is the best way to ensure fraudsters will be prevented from contacting potential victims. We do not yet know if there will be provisions in the Bill to ensure that search engines, social media and other online platforms will have a duty of care to ensure digital adverts, particularly those purporting to be from financial firms, are legitimate, but the fact that fraud and financial crime are now listed as priority harms suggests that we are heading in the right direction.
The Bill is due to be presented for its second reading in the House of Commons in March. PIMFA, with Which? and a number of our other partners in the campaign, will be making the case one last time in the coming weeks for digital adverts to come within scope of the Bill. We are cautiously optimistic that, when the Bill is presented to Parliament, it will include such provisions.
PIMFA & ThoughtLab Report: How digital, social, and economic shifts will transform the industry
Latest PIMFA Press Releases
PIMFA adds Qwil Messenger as PIMFA Plus Partner in drive towards further technology partnerships
Latest PIMFA Press Coverage
FT Adviser: Will a risk-based FSCS levy become reality?
Managers of Wealth Europe: PIMFA PIMFA delighted to welcome Redmayne
boosts board
Bentley’s Nick Bettison to its Board Insurance Post: Analysis: Weighing up the MyRegData becomes latest PIMFA Plus
FCA's consumer duty rules
Partner The WealthNet: FCA reporting tool PIMFA welcomes FCA’s move to
becomes PIMFA Plus Partner
strengthen financial promotions rules to protect consumers
Reuters: Britain to curb marketing of crypto investments
PIMFA welcomes extension of 10% depreciation notification rule flexibility but
Raconteur: Why retailers must balance
calls for longer term reform
personalisation and privacy
PIMFA's Latest Consultation Responses
PIMFA’s latest Consultation Response is to HM Treasury on the Future Regulatory Framework Review, Financial Services Strategy Read this and all other PIMFA consultation papers here.
PIMFA Events & Learning
PIMFA TRAINING: TRANSACTION REPORTING 2022 8 March | 9:30 - 12:30 A third of firms getting transaction reporting wrong Over four years since MiFID II regulations were introduced, many firms are still not fulfilling basic reporting requirements. The regulators 2021 figures showed over 1,000 error and omissions forms have been submitted every year since the introduction of MiFID II. This live online training session led by experts in their field will give you the knowledge and confidence that your firm’s transaction reporting processes are compliant with regulatory requirements. Please click here to register.
View Upcoming PIMFA Events & Learning here
Following on from the HUGE success of the PIMFA Virtual Fest series in 2021, PIMFA is proud to announce the Virtual Fest is back for 2022, this time taking place over 2 weeks.
Registration is open now, please click here to confirm your place.
Unlike previous years (where the conference took place over 2 days), the Virtual Fest 2022 will be taking place over 2 weeks, with exclusive and limited content released each day and available on demand throughout so that you can enjoy at a time which suits you best.
The Virtual Fest 2022 is a great opportunity for attendees to gain valuable insights, hear from industry experts, earn CPD hours and make connections with fellow colleagues.
Speech by Sarah Pritchard, FCA’s Executive Director, Markets, on The Future of UK Financial Regulation
The FCA has published a speech given by Sarah Pritchard, Executive Director for Markets, about the future of UK financial services regulation and the opportunities that lie ahead for financial markets. The FCA welcomes HM Treasury’s vision for the Future Regulatory Framework (FRF). The HMT proposals would give the FCA and the PRA, a secondary objective that will require the FCA to operate in a way that facilitates the long-term growth and international competitiveness of the UK economy. The FCA is embracing innovation and will make the Regulatory Sandbox permanent in order to enable new market entrants to test out their ideas in real world scenarios. It will continue to take a tough approach at the gateway for cryptoasset firms which need registration under the Money Laundering regime. The regulator is running a ‘Use it or Lose It’ pilot, seeking to remove permissions from those firms who do not use them. In December, the regulator confirmed a series of rule changes to the listings regime, so that UK public markets remain an attractive and trusted place to list companies – supporting growth and innovation. The FCA is also being more assertive and has confirmed further changes to their decision-making processes, to enable it to intervene more quickly and tackle harm. It is also publishing more consumer warnings.
The FCA expects that sustainable finance will continue to grow as an area of interest, as the world transitions to a zero-carbon future and financial services firms come under closer scrutiny on social issues. The regulator published its ESG strategy last November and, in January this year, closed a Discussion Paper on product labelling and product disclosures, with the aim of helping consumers navigate the landscape of sustainable investment options. The level of engagement was overwhelming, with around 130 stakeholders
providing their views. The regulator is working towards formal proposals by mid-year.
The FCA is also proposing to introduce new rules to embed diversity and inclusion across financial services. Later this year, the FCA will publish their overarching consumer and markets strategies which will set out priorities and focus over the coming years.
Mansion House Update, February 2022
On the 10 February, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury provided an update on the progress government is making to deliver its vision for the future of financial services in the UK. On 1 July 2021, the Chancellor’s Mansion House speech and accompanying document, ‘A new chapter for financial services’, set out the Government’s vision for an open, green, and technologically advanced financial services sector that is globally competitive and acts in the interests of communities and citizens, creating jobs, supporting businesses, and powering growth across all of the UK. Since then, government has made significant progress delivering on this ambitious vision to make the UK’s financial services sector the most trusted and competitive place to do business. You can find the update here.
Sustainability Reporting
The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has outlined its preliminary thoughts to the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) on the prototypes published by the Technical Readiness Working Group to support the development of International Sustainability Standards. The FRC strongly supports the development of global standards for sustainability reporting and the UK adoption of those standards. In developing these standards, the FRC recommends that the ISSB: provides stakeholders with an outline of the architecture of the standards; considers the four pillars of the TCFD in the context of the overall framework for narrative reporting; and discuss the extent to
which governance reporting will be within the scope of the ISSB standards.
The full response can be found here.
ESMA publishes Sustainable Finance Roadmap
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), has published its Sustainable Finance Roadmap 2022-2024 .
ESMA identifies three priorities for its sustainable finance work: tackling greenwashing and promoting transparency; building National Competent Authorities’ (NCAs) and ESMA’s capacities in the sustainable finance field; and monitoring, assessing and analysing ESG markets and risks. The Roadmap sets out ESMA’s deliverables on sustainable finance, how they will be implemented over the next three years and will serve as a practical tool to ensure that ESMA delivers on the wide array of sustainable finance tasks across several sectors in a coordinated way. ESMA will address its three priorities with a comprehensive list of actions across the following sectors: investment management, investment services, issuers’ disclosure and governance, benchmarks, credit and ESG ratings, trading and post-trading and financial innovation.
ESMA will shortly launch a call for stakeholder candidates to join a new Consultative Working Group supporting ESMA’s Coordination Network on Sustainability. ESMA will keep the Roadmap, including the identified priorities and the sectors of focus, under review during the entire implementation period of 2022 to 2024.
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