New Financial gives evidence to the Treasury Committee

New Financial LLP was delighted to be invited to give evidence to the Treasury Committee on the work of the Financial Conduct Authority. William Wright, New Financial LLP’s founder and managing director joined a panel with Miles Celic at TheCityUK, Hannah Gurga at the Association of British Insurers, and David Postings at UK Finance.

The hearing touched on many of the themes outlined in our recent report on ‘A focus on market outcomes: evaluating the UK regulatory framework’ which reviewed the performance of the UK framework and UK regulators in the decade since the launch of the FCA and PRA in 2013.

Speaking before the Treasury Committee, William highlighted one of the main conclusions from our report: that the balance between risk, growth, stability and consumer protection had gone too far and that in some areas regulation was acting as brake on much-needed investment.

With so much political and media focus on consumer protection, the FCA has a near-impossible job in balancing the three core elements of its statutory objectives - appropriate consumer protection, market integrity and stability, and competition – and is limited in its ability to meeting its new secondary competitiveness and growth objective.

William encouraged a wider and more nuanced appreciation of the competing pressures that regulators face, as a well as a more nuanced debate on the balance between risk and protection. You can watch some of his remarks on adjusting this balance via the video below.