The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has launched a review that could see the rules governing financial services firms streamlined to reduce the burden on businesses.
This comes following the introduction of the Consumer Duty on 31 July last year.
The financial regulator is calling on industry to identify rules which could be removed or simplified if they overlap with the duty.
The FCA says reducing complexity of its rulebook could lower costs for firms, encourage innovation and help support the risk appetite needed to support growth.
FCA chief executive Nikhil Rathi says: “We are firmly committed to playing our part in supporting economic growth. The Consumer Duty marked a major shift for firms and consumers by setting higher and clearer standards of consumer protection and requiring firms to put their customers’ needs first.”
“We now want to seize the opportunity of the Duty and the move to a clear outcomes-based approach to streamline our rulebook, lowering costs for businesses and supporting the competitiveness and growth of the economy.”
Alongside the broad rule review, the FCA is considering simplifying rules in the commercial insurance sector, a market worth over £15.5bn in the UK.
The FCA is inviting views on whether changing how customers are categorised could significantly reduce the time needed to take on new customers, or renew their contracts, and allow products to be custom made.
The financial regulator says this would reduce regulatory costs and may increase the competitiveness of the commercial insurance market.
The launch of both reviews came on the day the regulator published its first report dedicated to how it has taken forward its secondary objective to support UK competitiveness and economic growth over the medium to long-term.
The FCA has also confirmed that from 1 August, it will consult a new independent panel of experts when preparing cost benefit analyses.
This applies to proposed regulations which have an estimated net annual direct cost to industry of £10m per year and above.
