British banking damaged by slow supervisors

Britain’s regulators can be slow, inefficient and unpredictable, raising costs and slowly damaging the financial sector’s global competitiveness, industry body Thecityuk says in a report.

Complex, opaque and slow authorisations, such as for a new chief executive or a new product, can discourage growth and investment, the report stated.

It said The Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority were taking steps to speed up authorisations, but further action was needed.

The report was based on interviews with 20 industry leaders and a survey of 40 firms, with 83% of respondents saying Britain’s international competitiveness was slowly being damaged by regulatory inefficiencies.

It recommends that regulators are “commercially aware” of the challenges the firms they regulate are facing, publish better performance data on authorisations, enhance communication with firms, adopt a “digital-first” approach and train authorisation staff better.

“The UK is one of the world’s leading international financial centres, but our competitors are biting at our heels. Complacency is not an option,” Thecityuk chief executive Miles Celic said.

Britain is pushing through reforms to financial rules to help London remain globally competitive after being largely cut off from the European Union by Brexit, ushering in new competition from centres like Amsterdam and Paris. Thecityuk said it welcomes the so-called Edinburgh reforms to boost London as a global financial centre.