PRA confirms its statement of strategy

The Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) has published its  statement of strategy for 2014/15. The document sets the following aims of the PRA, to:

• continue to implement the forward-looking, judgement-based regulatory regime;

• continue to implement changes to domestic, European and international regulation, including the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013;

• influence, devise and implement policy to advance structural reform in banking, resolution policy, the secondary competition objective, and other elements of post-crisis standard setting;

• contribute towards delivering the Financial Policy Committee's macro-prudential objectives;

• ensure the PRA has the right people to meet its statutory objectives; and

• ensure the PRA has the right infrastructure and governance to meet its statutory objectives.  

The Director for Prudential Policy, at the PRA, gave a speech outlining the challenges faced by the PRA with regard to the introduction of the new Senior Persons Regime which the PRA is developing.  The aim is that individuals and regulators know who us responsible at a senior level for each aspect of a firm’s business and that those people can be held accountable for failures that they could reasonably have been expected to prevent or reduce.   

In deciding the level to pitch the Senior Persons Regime the following challenges have been identified:

• finding a balance between ensuring that senior management are held meaningfully accountable for failures they preside over, without the system turning into a strict liability regime;

• establishing the extent to which the PRA should guide firms on their internal organisation and allocation of responsibilities and not impose a one-size-fits-all approach;

• establishing and policing the certification regime for more junior employees and deciding whether to write rules that apply to the conduct of all employees; and

• deciding the extent to which persons approved under the existing regime should be grandfathered into the new regime, as grandfathering the entire population may not be the right answer.

The PRA will publish a consultation on implementation of the new regime in the summer.

Related links:

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/pra/Documents/supervision/stratstate.pdf

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/speeches/2014/speech711.pdf