FCA enforcement

FCA—objectives and principles

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is a risk-based regulator, with limited resources, and as such it concentrates its activity in the areas that pose the biggest threat to its statutory objectives, including its operational objectives of consumer protection, enhancing market integrity and promoting competition.

Underpinning the approach to financial services regulation, the FCA forms part of the regulatory structure for financial services firms. The FCA has a wide-ranging brief to regulate conduct in retail and wholesale markets, supervise the trading infrastructure behind those markets, and oversee prudential regulation of firms not prudentially regulated by the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA). Most UK firms are solely regulated by the FCA for both prudential and conduct purposes. The FCA must, where possible, act in a way which is compatible with its strategic objectives, and advances one or more of its operational objectives. The FCA’s strategic objective is to ensure that the relevant markets function well. The FCA also has the three operational objectives of consumer protection, integrity and competition. The operational objectives are intended to provide additional clarity around elements that would contribute to performance of its strategic objective.