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SM&CR overhaul: accountability stays, the paperwork goes

The PRA and FCA have launched parallel consultations to strip back the Senior Managers and Certification Regime, scrapping the Certification Regime for roughly 139,000 staff and promising firms around £2 billion of savings over a decade. For boards and senior managers, the accountability perimeter contracts on paper but the standard of personal responsibility does not move.

The Senior Managers and Certification Regime, the post-crisis spine of UK individual accountability, is being thinned out. On 22 October the PRA and FCA opened parallel consultations that would end regulator pre-approval for a range of senior functions, abolish the Certification Regime for around 139,000 individuals, and raise the conduct rule breach reporting threshold for most staff below senior manager level (Bank of England). The regulators estimate firms will save roughly £2 billion over ten years (Bank of England).

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Consequential developments in financial services and other regulated markets, with one implication for accountable leaders.