Financial Conduct Authority launches 2025–2030 strategy prioritising smarter regulation, growth, consumer support and financial crime disruption

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published a five-year strategy for 2025 to 2030 built around four priorities: becoming a smarter regulator, supporting sustained economic growth, helping consumers navigate their financial lives, and fighting financial crime. Operationally, the strategy signals changes to supervision and authorisations to improve efficiency and proportionality, including a less intensive approach for firms seeking to do the right thing, significantly streamlining how supervisory priorities are set, reviewing whether some data returns can be discontinued, and digitising and simplifying the authorisation process to reduce follow-up requests. The FCA also plans to invest in technology, people and systems to better handle the 100,000 cases it assesses each year and to act faster where harm is greatest. As it integrates the Payment Systems Regulator and many of its functions, the FCA intends to build on Open Banking and launch Open Finance to enable more seamless data-sharing and support product innovation, lower costs, more choice and better consumer information, alongside a stated follow-up to its earlier call for industry proposals to simplify and streamline FCA rules and reduce business burdens.