UK firms risk hamstringing FCA with information overload, former top official warns
UK firms risk hampering decision making at the City’s top regulator by overloading it with unnecessary information, a former top Financial Conduct Authority official has warned.
Speaking with the Following the Rules podcast, Nick Miller, formerly the head of the FCA’s head of asset management, said that firms were overburdening the regulator with excessive amounts of information and bogging down staff at the regulator.
“There is a tendency to seek to engage too much with regulators,” he told the podcast, which was published today.
“You need to have an ongoing dialogue with regulators, but I think just having conversations with your supervisors for the sake of telling them about the latest personnel change or whatever, might be potentially very interesting to you as a firm, but not necessarily something that would generate regulatory interests.”
Miller, who now heads regulatory affairs for credit agency Moody’s, said firms need to recognize there are thousands or firms across the UK and only “around 4,000” staff at the FCA.
Businesses also need to ensure they are engaging with the watchdog in a timely way and against the watchdog’s objectives of promoting “open fair markets and provid[ing] an appropriate degree of retail investor protection”, he added.
A spokesperson for the FCA told City PM today: “It’s important for firms and supervisors to have a constructive working relationship. We expect firms to tell us relevant information in a timely fashion.”
Miller’s comments come amid growing concern over workloads and staffing pressures at the UK’s top financial watchdog as its remit expands.
The boss of fintech giant Revolut claimed last week that staff shortages were contributing to delays around the firm’s banking licence, after progress on the licence had been “slower than expectation”.