Regulatory architecture

This Overview is a guide to the Banking & Finance content within the Regulatory architecture subtopic, with links to the appropriate materials.

This Overview contains information on the UK and EU frameworks for bank regulation.

UK financial services regulatory framework

The Financial Services Act 2012 (FSA 2012) replaced the Financial Services Authority (FSA) with two new regulators—the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA)—and created a new Financial Policy Committee (FPC) of the Bank of England (BoE).

Firms that are dual-regulated, such as banks, insurers and major investment firms, are supervised by the PRA for prudential areas and by the FCA for conduct areas. All other firms are supervised by the FCA for both conduct and prudential issues. FSA 2012 also gave the FCA new powers to regulate benchmarks and transferred responsibility for the regulation of consumer credit from the Office of Fair Trading to the FCA. The FCA also performs the functions previously carried out by the FSA as UK Listing Authority.

The FPC has responsibility for macroprudential regulation, while the BoE has direct supervisory powers in respect of financial market

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