Tag Archives: financial services

Pensions reform: Will the Chancellor’s vision become reality?

The Chancellor’s first Mansion House Speech, has made it clear that pensions reform is the first item on the Treasury’s agenda for financial services policy and regulation. Following an autumn budget that caused some business leaders to question the government’s pro-growth agenda, Rachel Reeves’ speech emphasised the important role that pensions reform will play in delivering long-term economic growth. 

As expected, Reeves reiterated her intent to pool Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) assets into a handful of megafunds. This proposal has been set out in the Pension Investment Review: interim report. The report, published by the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions, sets out the initial findings for ‘phase one’ of the government’s review. A consultation on this measure has also been launched alongside the report, offering stakeholders the opportunity to share views on new requirements for pooling and the governance of funds.   

The government has also launched a separate consultation on a proposal to set a minimum size limit on Defined Contribution (DC) scheme default funds in the private sector. The government believes that this measure will encourage consolidation and allow savers to be moved more easily from underperforming pension schemes to schemes that deliver higher returns.   

The government’s vision for the pooling of schemes has been welcomed by industry trade bodies, given the returns it could generate for savers and the scope it could create for pension funds to invest in longer-term assets. It is no secret that the Chancellor is keen for the UK to mirror the Australian system, where there is greater investment in infrastructure assets. 

However, the government will still need to assuage stakeholder concerns about these proposals, given the disruption it could bring to the pensions market. The government will need to balance its own policy goals with market realities. If the government requires a significant portion of pension funds to be invested in the UK, how will industry stakeholders be impacted, given some will view the maximising of returns as their primary objective, rather than investment in British assets?   

The government will also need to address concerns around the timeline for implementation. Given the pensions review is still in progress, there remains an opportunity for stakeholders to engage with the government to ensure that proposed policy changes support economic growth, and that the implementation process provides the industry with sufficient time to adjust to the new regime.  

The government has announced that the final report of its pensions review will be published in Spring 2025 and that the Pensions Schemes Bill will also be introduced to Parliament shortly afterwards. By this stage, the government will need to have set out a roadmap for its reforms. It will also need to address how, if at all, to mandate the consolidation of the LGPS, and funds in the DC market, and whether new rules will be introduced to regulate pension scheme selection advice and investment consultancy.  

These questions highlight the complexity of the task that the Chancellor faces. Despite these challenges, pensions reform remains at the heart of the government’s most important mission – delivering economic growth. The Chancellor’s speech and the newly launched consultations set out further details on the government’s vision for reform. The industry will now have the chance to scrutinise those plans and share its view on how to minimise implementation risks and maximise opportunities for growth.

GK Strategy is a political and regulatory consultancy firm supporting management teams and investors to understand and navigate complex policy changes.

We’d be delighted to share our perspectives on what the government’s pensions reforms could mean for you and how you can engage with policy debates. Please contact joshua@gkstrategy.com if you would like to discuss the reforms with the GK team.

GK Insight – Dr Iain Wilton on the future for financial services

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GK’s Head of Research, Dr Iain Wilton, reflects on the future of Britain’s financial services in the wake of the Queen’s Speech. 

Many aspects of the Queen’s Speech have received a lot of attention, from the absence of the Queen herself to the inclusion of so many housing-related bills – less than a week, in fact, after housing issues contributed to the Conservatives’ poor local election results, especially in London.

Surprisingly, however, relatively little attention has been paid to legislation that will fundamentally affect one of the UK’s most significant, successful but sometimes controversial sectors – its world-renowned financial services industry.

Together with associated professional service businesses, it employs more than 2.3 million people around the UK and contributes £193 billion to the economy – including £75 billion in taxes – yet some fundamental changes to its operation currently risk going ‘under the radar’.

Somewhat overshadowed by the announcement, in the Queen’s Speech, of 37 other pieces of legislation, the Financial Services and Markets Bill will cover everything from cash access to cryptocurrencies and scam prevention to the latest financial technology (fintech). Above all, the Government plans to introduce a new regulatory regime which will diverge from the EU model, encourage greater investment (especially in infrastructure) and, in the process, provide some of the ‘Brexit dividend’ that ministers are desperate to deliver before the next general election.

It will be a far-reaching piece of legislation. Moreover, it was accompanied in the Queen’s Speech by the dry-sounding but highly significant Draft Audit Reform Bill, which recognises that some high-profile company collapses (e.g. Carillion) have shaken people’s faith in the UK’s existing audit, governance and corporate reporting systems. As a result, competition will be increased, a new regulator will be created and, if the Bill is successful, trust should be rebuilt.

Both pieces of legislation will be subject to exhaustive scrutiny by MPs and peers, so each is certain to be amended and neither will be enacted any time soon.

In the meantime, however, significant changes are still afoot. In particular, the Financial Conduct Authority has recently published its new three-year strategy, which will result in the FCA becoming both a larger and a “more assertive” regulator which, in its words, wants to be “testing the limits of our own powers”. Indeed, after concluding that, at present, “firms are not consistently putting consumers first”, it will be publishing both an important “fair value” policy and an overarching “Consumer Duty” for financial services firms.

Due for introduction in late July, the ambitious new “Consumer Duty” will “set clearer and higher expectations for the standard of care firms give customers” and require them “to act in good faith, avoid foreseeable harm to their customers and support and empower them to make good financial decisions.”

At GK, we believe it represents a far-reaching tightening of the UK’s system of financial services regulation and, accordingly, it will be essential for firms to understand their new obligations and prove their compliance.

The Government’s legislative agenda, outlined in the Queen’s Speech, certainly dominated the headlines for much of the following week; its 38 bills will keep Parliament busy throughout the coming year; but some important policy changes are already imminent in the financial services sector – despite their low political profile – as the FCA prepares, even without new legislation, to flex its muscles as never before.

GK Insight - UK Financial Services Outlook

GK Insight – UK Financial Services Outlook

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Trade and Cooperation Agreement: impact and implications 

In December 2020, the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) signed a Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), delineating the new trade rules between the bloc and the UK after Britain’s decision to exit (‘Brexit’) the EU.

While for other aspects of trade (such as goods) the Agreement and its implications are clear, the TCA does not contain specific rules around financial services between the UK and the EU. Instead, the TCA contains some more general requirements:

  • neither the EU nor the UK should limit either the number of the other’s firms that can operate in its market or the number of people they can employ
  • the other’s firms should be treated equally to other national or foreign suppliers and should have the ability to access any state-operated payment systems
  • both entities will ensure that international financial services standards (such as those from the G20, the Financial Stability Board and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision) are implemented and applied.

Furthermore, the general rules around financial services have a so-called ‘prudential carve-out’, which allows each entity to adopt prudential rules – for example, to protect investors or ensure the integrity and stability of their financial systems. Another key aspect of the TCA is that both the UK and the EU have the ability to revoke equivalence decisions around financial services without consulting each other.

While this is potentially a positive aspect for the UK, as it permits regulatory divergence on financial services, it also represents a form of risk as the EU is not obliged to give British investors the same rights that they enjoyed when the UK was a member state.

Overall, the rules on financial services in the TCA provide for freer EU/UK access in financial services than would have applied under a ‘no deal’ scenario. However, access still falls far short of what businesses had previously enjoyed across the European single market.

Joint Declaration and Memorandum of Understanding

As the TCA does not set out specific rules around the regulatory aspects of financial services, the UK and the EU also signed a Joint Declaration, on 24th December 2020. Under the Declaration, the two entities agreed to work towards the establishment of structured regulatory cooperation on financial services. This would allow for exchanges of views and analysis relating to regulatory initiatives and other issues of shared interest. Such cooperation would also facilitate more transparency and easier dialogue over (for example) adopting, suspending, and withdrawing equivalence decisions – as well as enhanced coordination with international bodies.

The Joint Declaration also committed the UK and the EU to work towards agreeing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) by the end of March 2021 to establish a firmer framework for cooperation, including equivalence determinations. The UK Government confirmed at the end of March 2021 that the MoU had, in its view, been agreed in principle and needed only to be formally signed.

Among its other provisions, the MoU aims to establish what was called a ‘Joint UK-EU Financial Regulatory Forum’ to serve as a platform for dialogue on financial services issues. The MoU also focuses on non-legally binding cooperation but does not address the politically contentious issue of single market access for UK financial services. Reports have highlighted that the MoU has yet to be signed or, therefore, put into force.

This has potentially negative consequences for the UK financial services market, as it is simply reliant on equivalence decisions made by the EU. While the UK has published its own equivalence assessment, the EU has yet to make equivalence decisions for the UK (except for two temporary decisions granted at the end of the transition period – one of which expired at the end of June 2021). This means that UK firms’ access to EU markets depends on the rules which each member state applies to third country businesses.

As substantial equivalence decisions from the EU seem unlikely, the UK Government has indicated that it will change the UK’s financial services regulatory regime in the hope of delivering a so-called ‘Brexit dividend’.

Impact on financial services

It will obviously take time to determine the full impact of the Brexit deal on the UK’s financial services sector. Nonetheless, there have been some early indications of the effects of both Brexit and the TCA’s implementation.

In particular, there has been a shift of certain trading operations and staff from the UK to the EU/European Economic Area, with London losing out to cities such as Frankfurt and Amsterdam. This has been most notable in the cases of share trading, euro-denominated derivatives and asset management, although the scale of the lost business and employment is lower than some experts had predicted.

Britain has also lost its ‘passporting’ permissions which has, for instance, necessitated the restructuring of many UK firms’ European businesses. When the UK was part of the EU, firms could export products and services to each member state without the need for a specific licence as a result of the financial ‘passport’ system. Now, due to the absence of equivalence decisions by the EU, UK firms have had to either cease conducting regulated business in the EU, open authorised European subsidiaries or restructure their European businesses to ensure they remain outside of the relevant member state’s regulatory perimeter.

Indeed, the Financial Times (FT) reported that 2021’s first trading day saw €6 billion of EU share trading shift from London to EU marketplaces such as Madrid, Frankfurt and Paris. While share trading is not the most lucrative business within the financial services sector, the FT noted that the shift would still mean lower tax receipts for the UK Government. In addition, the newspaper subsequently reported, in February 2021, that Amsterdam had become Europe’s largest share trading centre after a range of EU-based financial institutions had moved away from trading in London due to the failed equivalence decisions. According to the think-tank New Financial, about 7,500 jobs have moved from the UK to the EU since the 2016 Brexit referendum, while banks and asset managers have transferred more than $1 trillion in assets – about a tenth of the total value. Finally, City A.M. reported in June 2021 that, according to data from EY (Ernst & Young), two in five financial services firms have moved or plan to move some UK operations and/or staff to EU member states. However, many employees would reportedly rather quit their jobs than be relocated. The financial services sector will also be affected by the TCA’s mobility provisions, which allow firms to send employees to deliver services in the EU, subject to conditions, with the exact rules varying between each member state.

UK domestic policy-making – financial services

In July 2021, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP) used his set-piece Mansion House speech to outline his vision for the sector. It included commitments to implement at least parts of two Government-commissioned reviews: first, Lord Hill’s review of the UK’s companies listing regime and, second, the Kalifa financial technology (fintech) review.

The British Government hopes that reforming financial services regulation will help firms trial technological innovations and scale up new products – helping the UK carve out a ‘first mover’ advantage by quickly developing new regulatory regimes that encourage firms to launch advanced products and innovate more quickly than other countries. It also hopes that such reforms could drive the financial sector to help deliver the UK’s net zero environmental ambitions.

The Treasury duly opened two consultations on the ‘Financial Services Future Regulatory Framework Review’, to gather views on the proposals for reforming some aspects of the financial sector’s reguation. Such reforms offer the opportunity to ensure that the UK maintains a coherent, agile, and international approach.

The first consultation was a proposal to define a clear allocation of responsibilities between Parliament, the Treasury and the financial sector. Other proposals included Government and Parliament to be responsible for setting the policy framework for the financial sector. The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) should be responsible for designing and implementing the relevant regulatory standards. The PRA and FCA should also be subjected to transparency requirements around activity – specific policy framework legislation.

In November 2020, Parliament’s all-party Treasury Committee also launched an inquiry into the future of UK financial services in order to examine how regulations should be set by Parliament and the Government once EU-based rules had ceased to govern the sector. As part of its inquiry, the Committee responded to the Treasury’s consultation with a series of recommendations. On the one hand, for example, the Committee agreed with the Treasury that the EU financial services rules that were on-shored – in short, the process of amending the legislation and regulatory framework, so that they can work in a UK-only context, while the UK was leaving the EU – should be moved into the regulators’ rule books. In contrast, the Committee does not believe there is compelling evidence to allow Ministers the absolute right to see regulators’ policy proposals before they are published for consultation. Regulators must be free, in the Committee’s view, to choose what they share with the Treasury. The Committee also believes there may be a role for the Government to use ‘activity-based’ principles to instruct regulators’ approach to specific business sectors, but it recommended that the Government should be sparing in their use. In addition, the Committee believes that there should be a targeted approach to effectively scrutinise regulatory proposals. Under the future Financial Services Regulatory Framework, the Committee suggested that proposals made by the FCA or the PRA should be put out into consultation. This means that industry stakeholders would have an opportunity to put forward their views before the proposal is integrated within the regulation.

As a response to the Treasury Committee and as a subsequent proposal on the Financial Services Future Regulatory Framework Review, the Treasury expanded on the previous consultation. This recently closed, on 9th February 2022. The Government intends to provide for a greater focus on the financial services sector’s growth and competitiveness by introducing new statutory secondary objectives for both the PRA and the FCA. More specifically, Ministers are hoping to amend the existing regulatory principles – especially those introduced as a result of EU regulation – to ensure faster but sustainable growth. The Treasury is also looking to create a new regulatory framework using primary legislation, moving the EU-derived rules into UK regulators’ rulebooks and, finally, allowing regulators to make changes to the regulatory framework as they feel appropriate.

Lastly, the House of Lords’ European Affairs Committee launched, in February 2022, another inquiry into UK-EU relationships in financial services. It will examine: Brexit’s impact, so far, on the UK’s financial services sector; the impact of the absence of a functioning framework for UK/EU regulatory cooperation; the future of cross-border financial services in the absence of equivalence; and the impact of regulatory divergence and agreements with third countries on UK/EU financial services trade.

Conclusion

It is clearly still an uncertain period for financial services. The failure to sign the MoU by March 2021, as planned, and the EU’s unwillingness to make an equivalence decision have encouraged the UK Government to push harder for a divergent regulatory framework for financial services.

Its decision to create a different regulatory framework from the EU may have both benefits and costs for the UK. In terms of benefits, its financial services sector enjoys a comparative strength that allows the UK to possibly diverge and expand its reach in non-EU countries. On the other hand, regulatory differences can trigger disputes, especially around the rules implemented by the TCA.

What is certain is that the UK Government seems willing to move towards a divergent financial services regulatory framework. It will take some time to see how various consultations, inquiries and future legislative proposals will affect this sector, and their true impacts might become apparent only in the longer term.

Piece by Lavinia Troiani. To discuss the outlook for financial services, please email lavinia@gkstrategy.com