Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority and Financial Conduct Authority announce mutuals growth package including credit union rules review and a new FCA Mutual Societies Development Unit

The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a joint package of initiatives aimed at supporting growth in the mutuals sector, combining new supervisory support with changes to authorisation processes and selected prudential measures. The FCA will set up a Mutual Societies Development Unit as a central hub to help mutuals navigate policy and legislative change and to support initiatives such as co-operative networks. The regulators will review mutual credit union regulations, looking at more risk-based requirements for larger, complex firms while improving proportionality for smaller credit unions. The FCA also announced free pre-application support for firms setting up as a mutual, innovating their business model or seeking guidance on targeted support permission, and cut target registration processing times for new societies from 15 to 10 working days via the Mutuals Society Portal. On the prudential side, the PRA confirmed that the Building Societies Sourcebook has been removed from the PRA Rulebook with immediate effect, alongside new PRA guidance on Part VIII transfers for consolidating smaller mutual insurers into larger firms and planned discussions with mutual building societies on preparation for mergers and acquisitions. The FCA additionally published a separate report in its role as registering authority assessing the mutual societies landscape.