18th July 2022

FCA, please, please, please, STOP

What is the role of a regulator? More importantly, what is the role of the FCA.

The FCA states on its website, under the Principles of good regulation, that “We must consider the principles of good regulation when carrying out our work. And regulated firms must adhere to the principles for businesses, which are their fundamental obligations as set out in our Handbook”.

Do take a look.

It breaks down into:  

“The principles for businesses” 

and the 

“Principles of good regulation”

But looking at the date, a lot has changed since 2016- the latest page update.

The regulator has swerved off piste, possibly with the assistance of Stonewall,  something that a straightforward FOI request has so far failed to uncover reasoning?

In September 2020, the FCA published it’s ‘Ethnicity Action Plan’ noting “We’ll be refreshing our Unconscious Bias mandatory training, exploring more impactful alternatives and rolling out three workshops across the organisation to support the changes we want to see. These workshops will focus on exploring privilege“.

Fast forward to 15th December 2020, in a written Ministerial Statement on Unconscious Bias Training (UBT) the Government stated that “Unconscious bias training typically aims to raise awareness of the potential biases and cognitive shortcuts that may negatively affect decision-making and behaviour in the workplace” was to be scrapped for all Civil Servants.

Their statement noted that “there is no recognised way of assuring the quality of unconscious bias training”. Additionally, there was “no conclusive proof that it changes behaviour or improves workplace equality in the long term”.

Government speak for it’s a complete waste of time and money

The Government’s view is that UBT has serious implications for organisations, who risk putting funding into poor quality and ineffective training and that other parts of the public sector should review their approaches.

An FCA whistle-blower told us the FCA does not seem to have heard the message and has been conducting workshops on White privilege and Micro-aggression since January 2021, just a couple of weeks after the Ministerial statement that “there is no conclusive proof that it changes behaviour or improves workplace equality in the long term”.

Not a month goes by without hearing of some serious financial services failings that regulation was intended to prevent consumer detriment. There is the usual handwringing regulatory  ‘coulda, woulda, shoulda’ responses. 

So, following the inclusivity, diversity and mindfulness stuff what action does the FCA take next?

It has urged staff to “abandon terms such as 'master', 'slave', 'black hat' and 'black list' which are commonly used in the IT world – even though it accepts none of them are racist” and use the terms 'primary' and 'secondary' instead”.

In 2022, we all realise that the English language evolves. The FCA want to make sure that their communications are ‘inclusive.' 

But no mention of all the above in the “Principles of Good Regulation” And no mention about how all of this woke focus will ensure that the bad actors are stopped in their tracks.  

Is the Woke “burden" or restriction the FCA now imposes on a person, firm or activity proportionate to the benefits the FCA expect as a result” or is that why it has not updated the “Principles of Good Regulation”?

Any thoughts anyone?

Panacea Comment