FCA Annual Work Programme 2026/27 Strategic Priorities

Our annual work programme details what we will deliver in 2026/27 on our 4 strategic priorities. This will be the second year of our 5-year strategy.

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  FCA annual work programme 2026/27

• Introduction

• Our themes

  • Areas of focus

• 1. A smarter regulator

  • Digital and data capabilities
  • Firms’ experience
  • An integrated and proportionate regulatory approach
  • Efficient and effective operations

• 2. Supporting growth

  • Unlocking capital investment and liquidity
  • Accelerating digital innovation to improve productivity
  • Supporting firms to start up and grow
  • Improving exports and inward investment

• 3. Helping consumers navigate their financial lives

  • Withstand a change in circumstances or financial shock
  • Save and invest for later life
  • More positive experiences with financial services

• 4. Fighting financial crime

  • Flagship financial crime conference
  • Detect and disrupt financial crime
  • Online safety
  • Engage with partners
  • Tackle organised crime
  • Efficiency, burden and supporting growth
  • Proactive, targeted supervision
  • Market abuse

• Our budget

  • Annual funding requirement
  • Capital expenditure

• More information

  • How we work
  • Outcomes and metrics 2025 to 2030
  • CP26/11: FCA regulated fees and levies: rates proposals for 2026/27
  • Regulatory Priorities reports

Our annual work programme details what we will deliver in 2026/27 on our 4 strategic priorities. This will be the second year of our 5-year strategy.

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Introduction

‘In 2026/27, we’ll work to deepen trust, rebalance risk and support growth to improve lives across the UK financial system.'

Our work helps to enable a fair and thriving financial services market for the good of consumers and the economy.

This work programme sets out our priorities for 2026/27 to achieve the vision in our 5-year strategy: to deepen trust, rebalance risk, support growth and improve lives.

In 2026/27 we will continue to focus on 4 strategic priorities – which reinforce each other. We have organised our work programme by theme so it’s clear the outcomes we aim to achieve. Much of our work will support more than one theme.

Our workplan will enable us to respond effectively to the evolving external environment, including geopolitical risks, economic uncertainty and technological change.

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Our themes

In 2026/27, we’ll continue to deliver 4 strategic priorities:

• 1. A smarter regulator
• 2. Supporting growth
• 3. Helping consumers navigate their financial lives
• 4. Fighting financial crime

In the summer we will publish our Annual Report and Accounts, demonstrating the progress made towards our outcomes and metrics in the first year of our strategy.

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Expand for accessible version of strategy diagram

Circular diagram with 'improve lives' at the centre, surrounded by 4 aims: smarter regulator, fighting crime, supporting growth, and helping consumers – with an outer ring showing 'deepen trust' and 'rebalance risks'.

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Areas of focus

Alongside our 4 strategic themes, we’re progressing several cross-cutting projects. These include:

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Consolidating the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR)

Ahead of legislation, we will continue the work of consolidating the PSR’s responsibilities into the FCA.

We will support the delivery of a clear, predictable and proportionate regulatory framework for the UK’s dynamic and fast-evolving payments landscape.

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Anti-money laundering (AML) supervisory reform

The Government intends to legislate to make the FCA the anti-money laundering supervisor for legal, accountancy, and trust and company service providers.

We’ll work closely with the Government, professional body supervisors (PBSs), HM Revenue and Customs and the approximately 60,000 new firms we will be supervising to simplify the framework for AML supervision, deploying our technical capabilities innovatively and at scale to ensure more consistent oversight and help us better identify and disrupt crime.

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Motor finance redress

We will set out our approach on motor finance redress shortly after markets close on Monday 30 March, having consulted on a compensation scheme in October 2025.

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1. A smarter regulator

More efficient and effective.

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We want:

• Our digital and data capabilities to enable colleagues, firms and consumers to make smarter and faster decisions.
• To improve firms’ experience, including with a reduction in unnecessary administrative burdens.
• Our regulatory model to be purposeful, proportionate and predictable.
• Our operations to be efficient and effective. Find out what we will do this year towards achieving our outcomes below.

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Digital and data capabilities

Our digital and data capabilities will help us be a smarter regulator.

• Continue investing in our data and technology platforms and services, progressing digitalisation, modernisation and keeping pace with developments in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing. This will include further investing in our AI teams and capabilities to exploit opportunities.
• We will further build regulatory readiness for quantum computing through targeted research, improving specialist capability and convening industry, academia and international partners.
• We will advance the Supercharged Sandbox by onboarding new cohorts of firms, expanding access to high‑quality synthetic data, and providing structured regulatory and technical support to enable firms to trial AI‑driven financial innovations in a controlled environment, strengthening the evidence base for future policy and safe market adoption.
• Integrating AI into regulatory workflows, enabling us to detect harm more effectively and speed up regulatory decision-making.
• Using generative AI to review documents received from firms, supporting faster decisions. Following successful testing, we will begin rolling it out across authorisations and supervision.
• We will invest in standardising our software development toolsets to increase speed of development.

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Firms’ experience

We'll reduce administrative burden and provide certainty.

• With 99% of all authorisation applications now decided within current statutory deadlines, we will further reduce authorisation timelines and continue to report against new, shorter voluntary targets.
• Increase the number and range of firm and fund applications submitted through simplified and digitised forms. This will improve the firm experience, encourage higher quality applications and improve the quality of data we collect, enabling us to determine applications faster.
• Improve our methods to understand and measure firms’ experience of interacting with us, helping identify what works well and where we could improve.
• Work with the Government and other regulatory partners to modernise the redress system. We will monitor trends to spot emerging issues earlier and deal with them more effectively.
• Increase proportionality and effectiveness of the Senior Managers Regime while maintaining the Regime’s core principles and benefits.
• Reduce burden on firms by only collecting necessary data. Remove 3 regular data returns in April and reduce the frequency of another, benefiting at least 11,000 firms. Continue to retire data returns that are no longer needed, and reduce the requirement for ‘nil returns’.
• Migrate more data requests onto My FCA. By the end of the year, firms will be able to see most of their regulatory tasks in one place, making it easier to meet their responsibilities.
• Use a sandbox environment to test data feeds between us and participating firms, with a view to further reducing manual effort.

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An integrated and proportionate regulatory approach

• Simplify rules where appropriate, ensuring our rules are more accessible through our new Handbook website. This will reduce unnecessary friction, support innovation and competition, and help firms deploy resources more efficiently while maintaining high standards.
• Further adapt our supervisory approach, increasing the number of firms we have touchpoints with, and tailoring our ongoing supervisory approach based on risk.
• Adopt a more coordinated approach to communicating and engaging with firms, including through setting out regulatory priorities by each sector, to enable more efficient collaboration and to help firms meet regulatory outcomes.

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Efficient and effective operations

• Increase our efficiency by improving planning capability to make sure we better align resources with strategic priorities. This will ensure we are making best use of the fees we receive and keep tight control of our headcount.
• Use data analytics and digital tools to identify the greatest harms faster, and invest in smarter case handling to make internal processes, like triaging information and intelligence, more efficient.

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2. Supporting growth

Enabling investment, innovation and competitiveness.

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Our strategy sets out the following outcomes:

• Increased competitiveness of the UK financial services industry.
• A more productive and innovative financial services industry.
• Sustained UK economic growth supported by deeper investment, stronger capital markets and more efficient financial services. Find out what we will do this year towards achieving our outcomes below.

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Unlocking capital investment and liquidity

• Consult on the pension charge cap with the aim of facilitating access to a broader range of asset classes while maintaining an appropriate degree of consumer protection.
• Make rules for alternative investment fund managers more proportionate and streamlined so it’s easier for firms to enter the market, grow, compete and innovate.
• Reform capital requirements for solo-regulated investment firms to improve liquidity.
• Eliminate disproportionate costs to support the issuance of, and investment in, securitisations by simplifying the framework.
• Establish a bonds consolidated tape and progress one for equities to further improve the smooth functioning of markets and support trade execution quality.
• Engage with the market to identify any barriers to scaling finance for climate solutions and consider practical ways to remove them.
• Support mobilisation of defence investment to protect the UK's resilience and economic security, including prioritising defence-focused funds applying for authorisation so they can get to market faster.
• Set clearer standards for firms to identify where the Consumer Duty and retail protections do not apply. This will allow firms and professional investors to confidently access and participate in our thriving wholesale markets, encouraging greater investment and appropriate risk taking.
• Continue work on implementing the pensions value for money frameworks, pending legislation.
• Consult, together with the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), on a proportionate authorisation and regulatory regime for captive insurance to reflect the lower risk it poses.
• We will continue to review aspects of our rules for companies raising capital, building on major updates to the Listing Rules in 2024 and the new prospectus rules in January. This will include starting a review of the Disclosure and Transparency Rules and considering how aspects of the UK Listing Rules apply to specific types of investment entities.

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Accelerating digital innovation to improve productivity

• Develop the long-term regulatory framework for open banking, putting it on a sustainable and competitive footing.
• Publish our open finance roadmap and lead a taskforce to prioritise use cases and understand growth opportunities for the UK, with policy sprints informing regulatory design, building on our previous TechSprints on small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) access to finance.
• Support the issuance of UK stablecoins, providing faster, cheaper and more convenient payments.
• Make progress on our roadmap on fund tokenisation, including issuing guidance for operating a tokenised fund.
• Support the work of the Dematerialisation Market Action Taskforce, which is looking to replace certified shares, improve processes for issuers and help investors better exercise shareholder rights. This should make post-trade arrangements more efficient and attractive for issuers, intermediaries and investors.
• Continue to support the pensions dashboards programme to ensure pension providers are connected and ready to provide data, and, in due course, open the authorisation gateway.
• Reinforce the UK’s position as a leading centre for digital assets. Launch and process applications from firms that want to undertake the new cryptoasset-regulated activities.
• Continue work with industry and the Government to explore options to speed up bereavement insurance claims.

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Supporting firms to start up and grow

• Further speed up initial public offering (IPO) applications by proposing to remove the 7-day research waiting period.
• Develop a provisional licence regime alongside the Government. This will give relevant firms time-limited permissions to operate in a controlled environment and under strong regulatory oversight as they work to meet the full threshold conditions within 18 months.
• Continue making it easier for innovative and high-growth firms to scale. We will open the joint FCA and PRA Scale-up Unit to a second cohort of solo-regulated firms.
• Conduct a review into how our regulation can help SMEs to access finance so they can start up and grow.

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Improving exports and inward investment

• Expand our overseas presence, including to China, India and potentially the United Arab Emirates, and deepen relationships in Singapore and the US. This will enable us to deepen understanding, gain insights and strengthen the support framework for overseas firms wanting to establish or expand their presence in the UK.
• Engage with the US G20 Presidency on modernising regulation and prepare for the UK G20 Presidency in 2027. This will involve influencing reforms to reduce barriers to market access, streamlining cross-border disclosure requirements and increasing regulatory predictability for UK firms operating around the world.
• Support the UK Government in trade negotiations. This will help create new opportunities for UK firms to grow and expand overseas.
• Implement a regulatory regime for Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) ratings that improves trust and transparency.
• Play our part in supporting UK participants to adopt a T+1 (trade plus 1 day) securities settlement cycle next year.
• Reform remuneration rules for solo-regulated firms, balancing risks to investors and markets with the impact on firms.

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3. Helping consumers navigate their financial lives

Boosting trust, product innovation and support for consumer decision-making.

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Our strategy sets out 3 outcomes, that more consumers are better able to:

• Withstand a change in circumstances or financial shock.
• Save and invest more for later life.
• Have more consistently positive experiences when engaging with financial services. Find out what we will do this year towards achieving our outcomes below.

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Withstand a change in circumstances or financial shock

Deferred Payment Credit (DPC)/ Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL)

• Begin regulating DPC/BNPL, with lenders required to assess affordability from July. We will review firms’ applications to be fully authorised while running a temporary regime for existing operators who currently do not have the regulatory permissions. Our proportionate approach to regulation will mean that borrowers have sufficient protections, while also ensuring that the product remains widely available and accessible. Review the high-cost short-term credit price cap, introduced in 2015, to check it’s at the right level to protect consumers from harm while ensuring they have access to affordable credit.
• Implement rules and support industry-led initiatives to improve consumers’ credit information. This will help lenders better assess credit risk, supporting access to credit and fairer pricing leading to fewer instances of over-indebtedness.

Financial inclusion and capability

• Continue our InvestSmart campaign to help consumers make better-informed investment decisions and reduce harm.
• Support the Government’s Financial Inclusion Strategy, including progressing variable recurring payments – giving consumers the ability to securely authorise trusted third parties to manage recurring transactions, offering both them and firms greater choice and flexibility.
• Work with Fair4All Finance, the insurance industry and social housing providers to explore different methods of increasing contents insurance uptake for social renters.
• Convene industry and consumer groups to build a shared understanding of how travel insurance underwriting decisions are reached for those with pre-existing medical conditions.
• Through our innovation services, support the Fair4All Finance pilot of a small sum personal loan product in England, which could unlock millions in affordable credit.

Supporting customers in vulnerable circumstances

• Undertake a multi-firm project among smaller payment firms to identify good practice and areas for improvement on treatment of consumers with vulnerable characteristics.

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Save and invest for later life

Pensions

• Introduce a regulatory framework on the long-term value of workplace pension products, working with the Department for Work and Pensions and The Pensions Regulator (TPR).
• Reform pensions requirements for a changing market, focusing on interactive digital pension planning tools and support for consumers to make informed decisions.
• Work with the Government and TPR to make sure consumer outcomes across contract and trust-based pensions arrangements are consistent.

Expanding consumer access to investments

• Through the Advice Guidance Boundary Review, we have introduced targeted support which enables firms to offer suggestions to groups of customers with common characteristics. This means that millions more people could get support on pensions and investments. When targeted support goes live in April, we will support firms offering the new service.
• We will consult on ways to give firms confidence to offer simple forms of advice to help consumers make informed financial decisions. Our aim is to build a stronger UK investment culture where consumers get clear information about investments. This will improve consumers’ confidence to invest, taking appropriate risks that meet their financial goals. We’ve already introduced the Consumer Composite Investments disclosure regime, and will support firms to implement it effectively. We will also further review the requirements around Markets in Financial Instruments Directive disclosures.
• Continue to encourage innovation in the way firms present risk information to consumers in financial promotions.
• Following our 2025 Discussion Paper on how regulation can better support retail investment, we will set out next steps on expanding consumer access to investments.

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More positive experiences with financial services

Consumer Duty

• Support firms to meet their obligations under the Duty by publishing more examples of good and poor practice. We’ve already published a review on the consumer understanding outcome of the Duty. We will clarify how the Duty applies to wholesale firms throughout the distribution chain.

Access to cash

• Evaluate the effectiveness of the access to cash regime.

Mortgages

• We will bring forward proposals to expand access for first-time buyers and other under-served consumers. We will also develop policy to support later life lending to meet future customer need throughout 2026.
• We will further consider the role and standard required for mortgage disclosure to improve customers’ digital journeys and alignment with the Consumer Duty.
• Continue to support the Government and industry to deliver digitalisation of the house-buying process. Build on recent open finance TechSprints to show how firms can use innovation to engage customers about their finances, especially mortgages.
• We will continue to collaborate with the Government and others on steps to support victim-survivors of economic abuse.
• We will explore ways to improve consumer understanding and appreciation of how climate risks, and particularly flood risk, may affect them financially.
• We will explore the potential cost-benefit of revised standards for debt consolidation, aligned with the Consumer Duty.

Insurance

• We will progress work set out in our response to the Which? super complaint. This includes analysing how different sales processes affect consumer outcomes, finding new ways to improve consumer understanding of their cover, considering how we capture claims outcomes as part of our post-implementation review of value measures rules and reviewing how home and travel insurance firms oversee third parties involved in claims handling.
• Conclude our pure protection Market Study. We’ll look for ways to reduce the protection gap, and improve consumer awareness and claims experience. We’ll also examine further claims ratios and incentives for consumers to switch products.
• Monitor annual percentage rates in premium finance and act where we have concerns about fair value.

Innovation

• Identify good practice examples of firms harnessing innovation, alongside common themes, risks and opportunities, using insight from our Innovation Hub.

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4. Fighting financial crime

Disrupting criminals and supporting firms to be an effective line of defence.

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Our strategy sets out the following outcomes:

• Slower growth in investment and Authorised Push Payment fraud.
• Protect market integrity.
• Tackle money laundering through the financial system. Find out what we will do this year towards achieving our outcomes below.

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Flagship financial crime conference

• We will convene firms, stakeholders and law enforcement partners to strengthen the fight against financial crime. We will use this to showcase how data and technology can improve detection, prevention and disruption.

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Detect and disrupt financial crime

• Continue to strengthen our data-led detection capability by integrating multiple datasets to identify financial crime earlier and intervene more quickly. We will champion innovation by supporting development and adoption of new technologies, including RegTech solutions.
• Use our full range of powers to disrupt, pursue and sanction those committing and enabling financial crime.

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Online safety

• Create a single, end-to-end, intelligence-led service so we can spot and stop the highest harm financial promotions faster, at lower cost and with consistent regulatory outcomes.
• Continue our work to proactively test the controls of social media platforms and search engines in preventing and removing illegal content.
• Use data and technology to identify websites and social media that promote unauthorised financial services, raising public awareness through our Firm Checker.
• Engage with Ofcom on the upcoming fraudulent advertising codes of practice.
• Take joint action with domestic and international partners against illegal content online.

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Engage with partners

• Continue to drive improvements in the legal and accountancy sectors through the Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision as we prepare for our remit to expand to supervision of the legal and accounting sectors and trust and company service providers for AML purposes.
• Continue to engage with finfluencers around the risks and responsibilities of promoting financial products to raise standards.

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Tackle organised crime

• Continue to make it harder for serious organised crime to abuse regulated financial services to launder money and commit crime. We will prevent criminals getting access to financial firms and disrupt and disable their activities when we detect them.

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Efficiency, burden and supporting growth

• Explore whether more proportionate, streamlined approaches to Know Your Customer, particularly on smaller transactions, could reduce the burden and cost to firms while maintaining standards.

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Proactive, targeted supervision

• Focus our proactive assessments of anti-money laundering systems and controls for those firms we deem higher risk.
• Continue to engage with firms to strengthen sanctions systems and controls.

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Market abuse

• Protect market integrity through continued assertive action against those who commit market abuse. Improve our detection and investigation capabilities and deliver deterrence through a range of supervisory, regulatory and criminal sanctions.

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Our budget

Our annual budget is driven by:

• Our core operating activities (or ongoing regulatory activities (ORA)).
• The exceptional projects we undertake.
• Capital expenditure to develop technology and information systems and implement new regulatory and operational requirements.

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Annual funding requirement

Our annual funding requirement (AFR) is the fees we need from firms to do our work.

This is the overall number we'll ask for, split between all the firms we regulate.

In 2026/27, this is £788.9m.

This year's AFR is £5.4m more than last year (an increase of 0.7%).

What this means for your fees

How much your firm needs to pay will depend on your activities.

Find out how to calculate your annual fee.

The actual fees we levy will reflect the AFR net of rebates from financial penalties we collect (forecast at £72.8m).

For more detail on how we will distribute the AFR across fee-payers, read our annual fee rates Consultation Paper, which we publish alongside this work programme.

Read the fees consultation

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Data table

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| (£m) | 2026/27 | 2025/26 |
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| Ongoing regulatory activities (ORA) | 754.8 | 747.3 |
| Exceptional projects | 34.1 | 36.2 |
| Total: annual funding requirement (AFR) | 788.9 | 783.5 |

Ongoing regulatory activities (ORA) fees budget

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The ORA fees budget funds our core operating activities and is a significant part of making sure we meet the commitments of our work programme.

The ORA fees budget is increasing by 1.0% (£7.5m). This is a reduction in real terms.

Exceptional projects

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We collect fees for exceptional projects to carry out government plans and new legislation, or extend who and what we regulate (our remit).

See more detail on each project below.

Advice Guidance Boundary Review Open banking/open finance Smarter Regulatory Framework InvestSmart campaign Cryptoasset regime Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) ratings Funeral plans

Advice Guidance Boundary Review

£2.0 million

We will levy:

• £0.7m to continue work to simplify advice to help customers in their investment decisions.
• £1.3m in operationalising and authorising targeted support. This is £1.7m less than last year.

Open banking/open finance

£4.6 million

We will levy £4.6m in our work to develop the long term regulatory framework for open banking and establishing a sustainable and competitive footing so that the ecosystem can grow beyond the current functionalities and bring greater choice to users while boosting innovation and growth.

We will develop open finance to enable a world-leading, sustainable smart data economy which empowers consumers and small/medium businesses to take control of their finances and access innovative services through secure and consented data sharing.

This is £1.4m more than last year.

Smarter Regulatory Framework

£13.4 million

We will levy £13.4m to continue our Smarter Regulatory Framework work programme.

This is £4.4m more than last year.

By modernising and simplifying the regulatory landscape through this programme, we aim to create a framework that is clearer, more proportionate, and better aligned with the needs of our markets, ultimately helping to foster innovation, competition, and sustainable economic growth.

InvestSmart campaign

£2.5 million

We will levy £2.5m for our InvestSmart campaign to help consumers make better-informed investment decisions.

This is £0.2m more than last year.

Cryptoasset regime

£9.0 million

We will levy £9.0m to establish a robust regulatory framework for cryptoasset activities in the UK.

This is £1.2m more than last year.

The regime will be focused on delivering the policy set out in the crypto roadmap, including pre-application engagement with firms to enable them to apply for authorisation from September 2026 onwards.

The regime will go live in October 2027.

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) ratings

£1.9 million

We will levy £1.9m in the new regulation of ESG ratings.

This is £1.1m less than last year.

Following the publication of our Consultation Paper, we will continue to engage closely with stakeholders seek feedback on our rules, finalise them and issue our Policy Statement.

We want to make ESG ratings more transparent and reliable to support better decision-making in the market.

Funeral plans

£0.7 million

We will continue the recovery of Funeral Plans implementation costs at £0.7m a year as stated in our 2023/24 Fee Rates Consultation Paper.

This is the same as last year.

Work on other significant exceptional projects continues in 2026/27, including motor finance, but the recovery of these costs will be deferred to the future and consulted on at the appropriate time.

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Capital expenditure

Our capital expenditure budget reflects the ongoing development of IT systems, infrastructure and accommodation.

This year’s capital expenditure is £47.0m.

This is £13.6m more than last year.

• The increase in IT systems development and infrastructure is driven by cyclical end-user computing investments.
• The increase in property, plant and equipment spend is driven by planned expenditure on a new Leeds premises. This spending is largely funded through the ORA depreciation charge, spread out over multiple years.

| (£m) | 2026/27 | 2025/26 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| IT systems development and infrastructure | 35.3 | 29.6 |
| Property, plant and equipment | 11.7 | 3.8 |
| Total budget | 47.0 | 33.4 |

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Page updates

26/03/2026

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