FIN.

Financial services after Brexit updates

The EU Financial Affairs Sub-committee has opened an inquiry into financial services after Brexit and has been taking evidence. Most recently it has been questioning the BoE and FCA.  They largely discussed the key risks of trading with the UK Central Counterparty, uncleared derivatives and the lack of equivalence risk.  They also discussed the inherent difficulties in any agreement that would in principle require the UK to follow EU rules while having no say in them. Sam Woods commented on how hard the UK had had to work to ensure CRD V would not jeopardise the ringfencing within banks.  Andrew Bailey discussed the difficulties in, on the one hand, being equivalent on day 1, which would be easy, but on the other, not knowing what may happen in the future, with the EU less likely to grant equivalence without some sort of guarantee.

Meanwhile, FCA has updated various pages on its website giving guidance to UK firms – although at the moment it can do little more than encourage firms to fully think through the possible impact of a range of scenarios at the end of the transition period.

Emma Radmore