Regulatory Watch – UK Edition – January 2020

Happy new year! In this exciting edition of RegWatch, we look forward to 2020. As our UK team grows from strength to strength, we have spent some time forecasting the top 20 regulatory themes we think will be important for firms to either consider or address. You may think some of these themes look similar to last year (and the year before). We think there are important nuances. This year, and indeed this decade, we believe will herald significant changes across financial services regulation in the UK. Throughout the year, our RegWatch publication will deep dive into each of these regulatory themes.

Brexit has been on the agenda for most of our clients since the referendum vote in 2016. Well, its finally happened. We explore the potential challenges firms will face during the transition period running until the end of 2020. Whilst significant work has been undertaken by UK ‘outgoing firms’ to secure their future business in European markets, current ‘incoming’ EU branches will need to focus on enhancing their control frameworks. The biggest change we anticipate though is to the future of UK regulation after the transitional period is over. We expect a raft of changes in the approach to regulation by UK regulators, though any equivalence agreements may impact this.

As always, a snapshot from EROS – our regulatory horizon scanning tool – is appended, setting out the regulatory news from last month. If you have any comments, suggestions, or would like further details on any of the features included in this month’s edition, please do not hesitate to contact me or the team.

Manmeet Rana

UK Head – Aurexia