Britain’s Financial Services Authority is adopting changes to help speed up its processing of enforcement cases, following the recommendations of an in-depth review.

An “end-to-end” review of the FSA’s enforcement process was announced by the FSA’s chief executive John Tiner in September. Acknowledging that the FSA could and should act more quickly in the face of misconduct, the objective of the review was to identify ways in which the enforcement process could be both improved and speeded-up.

Recommendations contained in the report include: shorter time targets for each stage of the referral and investigation processes; a faster process for referring cases to enforcement for investigation; improvements to the speed and efficiency of investigations while also retaining their quality and fairness (it is targeting an average savings of about 30% in the time taken to complete investigations); investment in IT to assist in the management of cases and the handling of information gathered in investigations; speeding-up the decision making process without undermining its fairness or the quality of the decisions made.

The review was conducted in three parts, with separate teams looking at each of the case referral, investigation and decision making stages. The teams consulted external stakeholders and sought examples of good practice amongst professional service firms and other regulators both in the UK and abroad. Many of the recommendations made in the review are now being implemented, it says.