The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published a consultation proposing to require in-scope retail banks and building societies to submit an annual Retail Banking Business Models (R2B2) regulatory return, replacing the FCA’s infrequent ad hoc collections. The return is intended to provide a consistent view of firms’ business model size and composition across the retail banking market and support monitoring of competitive dynamics and emerging harms. The proposed reporting would apply where a firm provided services to UK retail customers and, across its last three Annual Financial Crime Reports and accounting reference dates, reported at least 200,000 UK customer relationships and total revenue of at least GBP 5m. The FCA expects 33 firms to meet the thresholds for the 2026 collection. The return would cover product and sub-product financial and volumetric data for residential mortgages, personal banking, personal lending, small business banking, other business banking, and wholesale funding, alongside whole-bank reconciliation metrics including operating costs, profit and loss, balance sheet, risk-weighted assets and capital ratios. Firms would also submit existing “off-the-shelf” documents (where available and shareable without breaching confidentiality or requiring third-party consent) on areas such as product offerings and changes, internal management reporting, non-core products, forward plans and customer research, with requirements to provide actual data, a reliable estimate, or an explanation where estimation is not possible. For groups, the FCA proposes a single aggregated return submitted by the ring-fenced parent firm, UK accounting parent firm, or another group entity where neither exists. Feedback is requested by 4 March 2026, with the FCA aiming to publish a final Policy Statement later in 2026 and to apply the rules immediately on publication. Submissions would be due annually by 30 November, with the first return planned for November 2026, and the FCA also plans a pilot and training during the consultation period and ahead of first submission. In parallel with the first regular collection, the FCA expects to issue a final voluntary ad hoc request to certain firms to collect 2024-period data to avoid a gap in the time series, and it intends to publish annual aggregated, anonymised market statistics and review the collection five years after implementation.

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