Financial Conduct Authority 2025–26: Work Programme Overview

The FCA has today set out its business plan for 2025–26, outlining the work it will be focusing on in the year ahead. The timing isn’t lost on us; one week after the article went live, the regulator revealed plans for a global expansion with new outposts in Washington DC and Sydney. The intention is clear: to strengthen international links and help secure investments from some of the world’s biggest investors in the UK.  For firms looking to scale, innovate, or even purchase FCA authorized EMI company structures, this international shift signals easier access to global markets and smoother cross-border operations under a more connected regulatory framework.

The Agenda in Brief

The AWP outlines four key priorities for the FCA:

1. Becoming a smarter regulator.
2. Financial services that are sound, open, and creative.
3. Helping customers feel better about their money choices.
4. Cracking down on financial crime.

These focus areas sit under the regulator’s five-year strategy: The FCA Mission, which details its longer-term goal to make markets work well for consumers.

A Smarter Regulator

Out with the Old, In with the New

The FCA intends to simplify regulation, returning to an outcomes-based approach:

• Cutting the Red Tape: Three standard data returns have been removed, reducing the number of returns filed by 16,000 companies. Further cuts are expected later in the year.
• One Entry Point: A new system will be established, through which fees, forms, and compliance can be made and submitted to a single system.
• Flexibility: Flexi collections mean firms can inform the regulator as and when they choose to, rather than work to fixed templates.
• Faster Approvals: Electronification of authorization workflows for faster approval lifecycle.
• Targeted Supervision: Low-risk firms will face a lighter touch, with resources focused on the higher-risk firms.
• Sharper Intelligence: New digital tools will be developed to help identify the source of a smear, to consign products and services hurting people to material that will harm the perpetrator, and with a genuine deterrent effect.

Supporting Growth

The FCA wants to show that regulation can drive growth. A lot of the 2025–26 plan has to do with the further opening of UK markets to competition:

1. Unlocking Capital Investment

• Reviewing requirements for trading firms.
• Easing conduct rules for commercial insurance.
• Introducing a new prospectus regime, bond transparency reforms, and a single bond tape.
• Expanding retail participation in corporate bond markets and building new markets for private companies.

2. Accelerating Digital Innovation

• Playing with AI applications in FCA’s AI Lab.
• Evaluating standards on contactless payments and on bereavement claims.
• Expanding Open Finance into SME lending.
• Building better digital securities sandboxes and crypto control.

3. Reducing the Burden

• Simplifying rules for reporting transactions, mortgages, and managing assets.
• Improving the SM&CR.
• Building the crypto foundation.

4. New Actions

The growth agenda has reiterated an enhanced compensation redress framework for motor finance, allocated a specific individual case officer for each firm in the regulatory sandbox, and supercharged work to promote the UK internationally as a financial centre.

Protecting Consumers

The FCA’s plan is still about the customer:

• Motor Finance: Andrew has brought claims industry-wide which have already been determined by case law.
• Consumer Duty: Stronger standards will be set, and good and bad practices will be published regularly.
• Vulnerable Customers: Firms must treat consumers fairly. Higher standards will apply to firms that fail to do so.
• Advice and Guidance Border: Focused assistance will be provided for pensions and retail investments.
• Pensions Dashboards: Progress on dashboards will open the industry to their long-term potential.
• Financial Inclusion: The FCA will help the Government advance its work on workplace savings and a national financial inclusion strategy.
• Innovation for Resilience: Rules on buy now pay later products and deferred payment credit are being established, with government support for developing fintech solutions to build financial resilience.

Fighting Financial Crime

The FCA has declared that it will concentrate resources and efforts on financial crime and aims to:

• Deepen cooperation with law enforcers and decision-makers.
• Enhance AML monitoring against high-risk companies.
• Keep up pressure on market abuse enforcement.
• Use data and technology to catch unauthorized promotions.
• Develop new detection capabilities and enhance coordination in the fight against organized crime.

Global Reach and Market Confidence

The FCA’s international reach is increasing with senior staff in Washington DC and Sydney. This is a strong statement of intent: the UK is open for business, and international investors will find it easier to navigate their opportunities. For businesses, this could mean easier cross-border transactions and better connectivity to global networks. It might also help those looking to use FCA-approved EMI company structures as an ‘on-ramp’ to regulated activity overseas, offering more credibility and less friction.

Final Word

The FCA’s 2025–26 mission plan reveals a digitalizing, globalizing, and growing regulator. In some high-risk areas, certain rules may be eased, but they will be enforced more strictly. There will be new opportunities—along with more scrutiny—for businesses expanding, developing, or joining the market through a new EMI qualifying company structure.