The Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have provided an update on the joint transformation programme they set up in 2021 to overhaul data collection from UK financial services firms. The aim is to improve regulation of regulated firms and ease the burden of reporting for these firms. The programme is expected to take a decade to complete.
A joint Dear CEO letter from Sam Woods, deputy governor, prudential regulation CEO at the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), and Nikhil Rathi, CEO at the FCA, explains what the programme has achieved in its first year, what it is progressing into phase two, and what is needed from industry to continue the work of transforming data collection.
The letter accompanies publication of the first set of recommendations for data collection changes, and the Bank and FCA’s response to the recommendations.Reviewing the first year of the programme and its aim to ensure the Bank and FCA collect the data they need at the lowest possible cost to the industry, the letter notes encouraging industry engagement from more than 100 participants at over 40 regulated firms. The programme has also gathered a good understanding of the challenges and opportunities of data collection on both sides of the fence, which has led to an initial set of recommendations for data collection changes.
Recommendations and initiatives
There are seven recommendations for change, all approved on principal by the Bank of England and FCA, and comprising: better reporting landing pages; restructured reporting instructions; counterparty classification standardisation; a RegHub portal and homepages; firm view at a glance; future financial resilience survey; and intuitive form design.
Turning to progress, the letter describes data collection initiatives that the programme has set up in response to the recommendations:
- Delivering a more intuitive form design across regulatory returns that will make data submission simpler, faster, and more valuable
- Implementing a new landing page and set of reporting instructions for a statistical reporting form to make it easier for firms to understand their requirements and which data to provide
- Exploring the concept of a unified data collection portal for regulated firms to interact with regulators.
The programme expects to deliver the initial benefits of these initiatives by July 2023. It is also investigating a longer-term funding and resource model to ensure the programme can deliver desired transformation over coming years.
Phase two of the transformation, the start date of which has been pushed forward from June 2022 to September 2022, calls for industry participation in five use cases, subject to resource availability: commercial real estate data; retail banking business model data; incident, outsourcing and third-party reporting; strategic review of prudential data collections from solo regulation firms; and asset reporting for insurers.
Find out more about the joint transformation programme here.
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