Changing how firms experience FSA regulation
Principles-based regulation will require a change in behaviour from you and us – to an approach that is directed away from attention to detailed procedural points and towards the outcomes. We are looking for you to take greater responsibility for how to meet your regulator obligations.
Well controlled and managed firms that engage positively and openly with us should expect to experience real benefits from our more principles-based approach in the form of a regulatory dividend. We are actively considering what further regulatory dividends we can make available to small firms over and above, for example, the free roadshows and surgeries we currently offer.
We have added to these small firms web pages some simple examples to illustrate how we expect firms' behaviour to change.
Example 1 - Principle 3
Example 2 - Principle 6
We will continue to work actively with you to make more principles-based regulation a reality. Here are some examples of what we have planned for small retail firms:
Firm contact centre
You will, over time, see a better, consistent, and more efficient service from the Contact Centre. Our staff will be able to answer your reasonable questions on a timely basis and provide clarity and assurances around the regulatory outcomes and what they mean for your firm.
We will continue to expect you to use your own initiative to find relevant material, but will be more willing to provide further information and support where you have gone as far as you can on your own.
We will ensure our staff are better able to handle your complex queries. We will also need a highly effective knowledge management system and our staff will start to use improved search tools to access the information we hold on a particular topic and the decisions we have made previously, during the second half of this year.
Making the Handbook and other information accessible
The amount of information we produce can seem overwhelming, even if in practice most of it is intended to be helpful and supportive. In 2008, we will launch a new facility on our main website that will enable you to find the material – amongst all that we publish – that is relevant to your business and to search it more effectively. This system will also enable you to subscribe to updates on a particular topic that is relevant to you.
The small firms section of the website will continue to be upgraded to make the information you need more accessible.
Regulatory Returns
You are obliged to submit regulatory returns so that we can review developments and focus our supervisory attention. This reduces the burden of direct on-site supervision, whilst at the same time making sure we identify risks. We are reviewing the effectiveness of the regulatory reporting we request from firms in a number of sectors. One important fact is that we are bringing in line the data we request, as far as possible, with the information that firms use for their own monitoring to meet their management responsibilities.
Visits
We will focus on regulatory outcomes and what they mean for your firm and engage constructively with you on the basis of knowledge of your sector and general business practices. If you are visited as part of a thematic review, we will point out how the good and poor practice we have seen can help you to understand the outcomes we want to achieve and to apply a principles-based approach across your business.
