The FCA has announced a project to better understand how its rules affect smaller firms, including mortgage advisers and lenders.
The regulator published a note today informing firms that it would soon conduct a survey to specifically identify how FCA rules impact them, to “help ensure FCA cost benefit analyses and judgements of proportionality take account of smaller firms’ circumstances”.
A “small representative sample of firms” will be interviewed by consultancy Kantar Public on the watchdog’s behalf over the coming month.
This will help the FCA to design an online questionnaire, and in April and May this will go out to a wider sample of firms.
The FCA notes that the results will be kept fully anonymous and it “would greatly appreciate” firms’ participation.
Meanwhile, the FCA is also repeating its larger annual survey, and will be inviting 12,000 firms to take part in the research, with a view to publishing the results in the third quarter of the year.
The regulator writes: “[The survey] provides an opportunity for regulated firms to speak directly to the FCA and share their views and concerns. It provides the FCA board and executive with important feedback about the FCA’s performance and enables the FCA to adjust their approach to become a better regulator…If you are one of the firms selected to take part, please consider taking the time to complete it.”
