Co-authored by Tim Aron.
On February 19, the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) published an updated “one-minute guide” summarizing the changes to the FSA Handbook that will come into effect when the FSA’s two successor regulatory bodies, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), acquire their legal powers on April 1.
The guide confirms that the FSA intends to publish the FCA and the PRA Handbooks during March. The FSA expects to publish the designation and editorial changes online in early March. The remaining substantive changes that have been subject to FSA consultation will be published later in March, together with the relevant FCA and PRA Policy Statements.
The new FCA and PRA Handbooks will reflect the new regulatory regime (for example, references to the FSA will be replaced with the appropriate regulator). In some areas more substantive changes will be made to reflect the existence of the two regulators and their roles and powers as successors to the FSA. This will include the future processes for obtaining permissions, passporting, controlled functions, threshold conditions and enforcement powers.