Around a third of the FCA’s staff were deployed on Covid-19 related work, latest board minutes from the watchdog reveal.
Releasing details of a meeting from the 22nd and 23rd of July, the regulator said that at the time, a “reprioritisation exercise” had meant many employees were required to deal with the fallout from Covid-19
The “immediate resource pressures” of the pandemic resulted in some wider strategy work having to be delayed or phased over a longer period, the watchdog writes, adding that “further reprioritisation regarding resourcing for the rest of 2020/21” was now required.
Four strategic business priorities are laid out in the minutes: safe and accessible payments, ensuring consumer credit markets work well, fair value in a digital age and enabling effective consumer investment decisions.
“The importance of clear communications framing the current and future challenges for financial services, and the accompanying resource pressures for the FCA, were discussed,” the FCA writes. “This included ongoing engagement with consumers and other stakeholder groups to ensure the organisation was attuned to the practicalities of these challenges as they developed.”
During the briefing on the reprioritisation that had gone on so far, and what was to come from the additional review underway at the time, the FCA’s board noted the potential risks of reordering workloads.
The minutes show its favoured approach was a “preventative” one, “built up from regulatory non-negotiables through to more discretionary activities”.
“When considering the final proposals, the board was keen to understand the rationale used to drive decision making and how the resulting workplan responded to the future challenges for financial services,” the minutes add.
The July meeting was also the gathering that approved a number of new appointments to the FCA’s oversight panels, as well as non-executive hires into the Financial Services Compensation Scheme such as former Treasury committee chair Nicky Morgan.
A third? Are they making PPE or a vaccine?
Don’t be silly Chris…..they were aiding the spread ….
Just making sure every-one had a slice if the Covid pie
Am I being cynical, or should I suspect that self isolating and voluntary quarantine counts as Covid 19 work in the eyes of the FCA … JUSTIN find out please.
OR … has Justin got hold of half a story again … as he has in several previous instances …
One thing is absolutely certain – it is utterly impossible for the FCA to have one third of it’s staff on Covid 19 work.
JUSTIN – over to you to make some sense out of these ridiculous figures OR expose them properly OR shut up and do something more worthwhile.
The minutes are gibberish, probably written before the meeting. Can we not know how many FCA staff were absent because of Covid? Is it impossible to call out this facile bureaucratic drivel for what it really is – an insult to the intelligence? It is written so that no-one can possibly figure out what is going on.