International Competitiveness and Financial Regulators’ Mandates: Coming Around Again in the UK

Eilís Ferran

Journal of Financial Regulation, 2023, vol. 9, issue 1, 30-54

Abstract: Using post-Brexit regulatory freedom to strengthen the financial sector has been seen as a priority for the UK government under the Conservative Party following the 2017 general election. The laying before Parliament of the Financial Services and Markets Bill (July 2022) marked the start of a multi-year process aiming to transform the regulatory framework. Adding a competitiveness and growth secondary objective to regulatory mandates was an important part of the reform agenda set out in the Bill.This article draws on theory (regulatory competition, regulatory procyclicality, and regulatory design) and recent history (post 2008-crisis regulatory reform) to question the wisdom of reinstating international competitiveness in regulatory mandates in this way. The key concern is that this change risks opening the door to an excessively deregulatory agenda and the undermining of regulatory independence. That the new competitiveness and growth objective will be used to advance deregulatory agenda was already becoming evident during 2022 as the UK debated the adaptation and evolution of EU-derived prudential and capital market laws to suit its new situation.Since the competitiveness and growth objective bandwagon may have become unstoppable, the article directs attention to the role of accountability in protecting regulatory independence. Regulators need to be able to resist pressure to lower standards unduly, and an effective system of accountability can support them in doing so.

Keywords: financial regulation; Brexit; international competitiveness; Financial Services and Markets Act (2000) and Bill (2022); competitiveness and growth objective; supervisory independence/accountability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jfr/fjad001 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:refreg:v:9:y:2023:i:1:p:30-54.

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Financial Regulation is currently edited by Dan Awrey, Geneviève Helleringer and Wolf-Georg Ringe

More articles in Journal of Financial Regulation from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().