The FCA will send out a fourth round of its Covid-19 impact survey to advisers next month.

The information the regulator receives will help it obtain a “more accurate” view of firms’ financial resilience as a result of the pandemic.

Previously, the FCA has warned that a “significant number” of firms could fail this year, based on data it gathered in the other survey rounds.

Compliance firm Threesixty Services has told its member firms to expect to receive the survey for a fourth time between 12 April and 16 April.

The survey aims to help the FCA get a picture of the impact of Covid-19 to support its work to mitigate risks of harm to consumers, the market and competition within it.

This survey will again include 10 questions in total, designed to provide information about the following areas: liquidity/cash availability and needs; recent financial performance; scale of business activity and access to government schemes, Threesixty writes.

The FCA issued the first phase of its Covid-19 impact survey, which covered around 13,000 firms, in June 2020. It then rolled this out to a further 9,500 firms at the beginning of August 2020. This was repeated for both tranches two more times as the regulator is trying to understand the change in firms’ financial positions with time.

Timings

The FCA is planning to send this survey to the relevant firms in Tranche 1, on one of the following dates:

• Batch 1 – to be sent on 12 April 2021 – response due by 3 May 2021
• Batch 2 – to be sent on 13 April 2021 – response due by 4 May 2021
• Batch 3 – to be sent on 14 April 2021 – response due by 5 May 2021
• Batch 4 – to be sent on 16 April 2021 – response due by 7 May 2021

Source: Threesixty Services

The survey will be sent to all firms in Tranche 1 portfolios, which includes advisers and intermediaries and wealth management firms, unless they satisfy specific exclusion criteria.

Threesixty informed its members they will receive a link to complete the survey via email and not through Gabriel like some suggested after instances of scammers impersonating FCA sending out fake surveys links.

The firms are encouraged to check whether they receive a request to complete this survey from either [email protected] or an @fca.org.uk email address to avoid falling prey to these phishing emails and scams.

After the regulator sent out the first round of the survey in June last year, it emailed advisers to assure them it was a “genuine email” and “not a scam”.

But the regulator’s reassurance was deemed a strange inclusion, not helped by incorrect survey response dates and typos.

The FCA has reminded firms it is mandatory to complete this latest survey.

It says: “We will use the data provided, alongside existing data, to support our ongoing work. We expect to repeat this survey in the future.”