COVID-19: how the UK financial regulators are responding

The UK financial services regulators (the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), the Bank of England (BoE) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA)) are closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation and have all taken measures to seek to protect markets and consumers and to ensure firms have adequate contingency plans in place.

The outbreak came at a pivotal time for financial services regulation and the UK regulators have considered the pandemic in their policy papers on the subject (see our briefing on the new operational resilience for more details). Operational resilience is a key priority for the regulators and COVID-19 has brought this to the limelight.

The following webpages set out the measures taken by the UK financial services regulators to date and key points firms should be aware of.

• COVID-19: how the Financial Conduct Authority has responded
• COVID-19: response from the Bank of England and Prudential Regulation Authority
• COVID-19: the impact on the UK's payments industry

We have summarised the response of the European financial regulators separately.

Help is at hand

If you would like to discuss any of the points arising out of the regulators' announcements or need assistance with reviewing your contingency plans, please get in touch with a member of the tea