In his first Inside FCA podcast interview, Interim Chief Executive Chris Woolard discusses how the FCA has rapidly reprioritised work in light of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, and talks about future business planning
In the interview Chris Woolard talks about the FCA's work to reduce economic impact while helping to protect consumers, outlining the regulatory approach to recent crisis planning.
“What we’ve wanted to do is to get the firms we regulate to focus on serving their consumers through what’s a very difficult time, and also in particular looking at those who are vulnerable.”
He then explains specific areas of intervention, including mortgages and Business Interruption (BI) insurance, before talking in detail about the challenges and opportunities of technological advancement from new players in the financial services markets.
Addressing the priorities in the Business Plan, he lays out ‘clear areas of real focus’ as part of ongoing work, including retail investments, payments and protections for the consumer credit market.
He ends by talking about how recent crisis planning should be used to help with future work:
“I think one of the big lessons from the crisis is that importance of timely rapid information that really allows you in a matter of hours to assemble a picture on a market or a series of firms has been absolutely vital where we have it.
And that’s something that I think we should have uniformly across every single market that we regulate, and we should make full use of it to deliver a better public service.”