Skilled Persons Reports

The FCA has recently published information on the number of skilled person reports commissioned by them since the turn of the year. A skilled persons report is an additional supervision tool available to the regulator under the Financial Services and Markets Act whereby they seek the view of third party ‘skilled persons’ regarding certain aspects of a regulated firm’s activity or where they are concerned with an activity, they want further analysis undertaken. The costs associated with such a report are borne by the regulated firm subject to the skilled person report.

If you click the link here: https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/data/skilled-persons-q1-19-20.pdf you can see that:

• There were 9 reports commissioned by the FCA in Q1;
• 3 related to wholesale financial markets and retail lending;
• 2 in the GI space; and
• 1 in retail banking.

The areas of concern to the regulator centred on: Financial Crime; Control and Risk Management; and Conduct of Business.

It is clear therefore that the FCA will use all of the powers at its disposal when the need and circumstance dictates and impose on firms an intrusive and costly review and remediation programme.