In August 2023, the UK regulators gained a new secondary statutory objective to facilitate the international competitiveness and growth of the UK economy in the medium to long term.  The UK government change last summer bought this into focus.

Advancing growth is central to the FCA’s recently published five-year strategy.  “Growth” appears 30 times and on almost every page of the 22-page long strategy document.

A focus of this strategy is what the FCA terms “an international regulator for an international market”.  An outward commitment to this is the FCA’s new permanent presence in the US (in Washington DC) and in Asia-Pacific (in Australia), the first time the FCA has done so.

Announcing the personnel tasked with establishing the new regional hubs, Sarah Pritchard (FCA Executive Director of Supervision, Policy and Competition, and International) gave the featured quote.

FCA Enforcement is similarly committed to international cooperation in delivering its enforcement priorities, as captured in the speech last week in New York delivered by Therese Chambers (FCA Joint Executive Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight).  Chambers refers to economic growth as the government’s biggest priority, with every UK regulator having a part to play – perhaps none greater than the FCA.

Of its enforcement priorities, Chambers boils these down to four:

1. Keeping dirty money out of the financial ecosystem
2. Cracking down on regulated firms being used for fraud
3. Protecting the integrity of UK markets
4. Developing a safe crypto regime that protects consumers

The FCA is committed to tackling these in collaboration with partner agencies internationally.

Optically, the FCA is engaging internationally.  But will this translate into FCA supervision and enforcement activity, and ultimately deliver on growth?