HM Treasury appoints Katharine Braddick as next Bank of England Deputy Governor for Prudential Regulation and Chief Executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority

HM Treasury announced that His Majesty The King and the Chancellor have appointed Katharine Braddick CB as the next Bank of England Deputy Governor for Prudential Regulation and Chief Executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), succeeding Sam Woods when his term ends in June 2026. Braddick, currently Barclays’ Group Head of Strategic Policy and a senior adviser to the CEO, will take up the role on 1 July for a five-year term. In the post, Braddick will lead the PRA’s supervision and regulation of banks, building societies, insurers and major investment firms, and will sit on the Prudential Regulation Committee, the Financial Policy Committee and the Court of the Bank of England. The announcement also positioned the appointment within the government’s expectation that regulators remain focused on resilience while supporting growth and competitiveness, citing recent PRA initiatives including enabling up to 36,000 additional high loan-to-income mortgages for first-time buyers, implementing a “Strong and Simple” regime for smaller UK banks, capital reforms to lower requirements for lending to SMEs and infrastructure, and the Future Banking Data initiative to remove 37 reporting templates, estimated to save firms around GBP 26 million per year. The appointment followed a fair and open competition under the Governance Code on Public Appointments and is subject to pre-commencement scrutiny by the Treasury Select Committee.