Important: FCA requirement to update or confirm your firm details

A brief news release from FCA on 23 January (see here) reminded firms that, from 31 January 2020, practically all firms must annually check, amend, or confirm the accuracy of their firm’s details on the standing data section of the FCA Register, using FCA Connect.

The standing data is generally the boring details about you – where you are, who you are, who your advisers are. Stuff that doesn’t change very often. But when it does change, the Register should be updated.

You must do this within 60 business days of your accounting reference (year-end) date, regardless of whether your firm details have actually changed from the previous year. Otherwise enforcement consequences may follow, warn FCA!

So if you’re a 31 December year end, do it now – log in to Connect, click the button “Update or Attest your firm details” and then click the “show more” button under Firm Details. There are 5 pages to check – hopefully none of it will need changing!

New year, new enthusiasm!

Oh my!

Never did we expect FCA to start 2020 at such breakneck speed!

We’re not yet at the end of January and already five “Dear CEO” letters – and that’s just the one’s we’ve seen – have been issued!

Could it be that the authors are taking advantage of Andrew Bailey’s last days to get their own names out into the public domain and burnish their own credentials for the top job?

See our earlier prediction in our New Year newsletter “Into the Murk”.

Cynicism aside, these Dear CEO letters must be treated with full respect and considered by senior management – irrespective of whether or not you received them.

They give clear insight into FCA’s priorities for 2020 and their expectations of firms. That said, there are some recurring themes across all of these letters: the importance FCA places on non-financial misconduct, good governance, suitability, market abuse – and Brexit. All of these issues have been well-trailed in 2019.

Even so, these letters are difficult to find on the FCA site unless you know where they are. Searches for “Dear CEO” letters do not reveal them. They are “correspondence”. You can click the following links for what we think are the most significant ones: Asset Management, Alternatives and Advisers.

Fulcrum Compliance will be reviewing them with retained clients over the coming quarter.

Steady as she goes…

And on that note, FCA announced on 24 January that whilst an interim CEO has been appointed, the application process for the permanent role will be announced “in due course”! This could run and run…