The U.K. Treasury on Thursday introduced legislation to extend regulators’ personal responsibility principle throughout the financial industry, along with other reforms designed to enhance the resilience of the financial system.
The bill introduced into the UK House of Lords aims to strengthen the governance and accountability of the Bank of England, update resolution planning and crisis management arrangements between the Bank and Treasury, and extend the principle of personal responsibility to all sectors of the financial services industry.
“The changes being brought forward represent the furthest reaching reforms the government has made on the personal responsibility of senior managers in the financial services industry, ensuring that they face the same ‘duty of responsibility’ in whatever type of firm they work at,” the government said in a statement.
Extending the accountability principle, “is an important step in embedding a culture of personal responsibility throughout the financial services industry,” said Tracey McDermott, acting chief executive of the FCA, in a statement.
“The senior managers’ and certification regime is intended to deliver better decisions to help avoid problems arising. We remain committed to holding individuals to account where they fail to meet our standards,” she added.
Separately, the Bank of England (BoE) published two consultation papers on Thursday: one on ring-fencing requirements, and one on operational continuity. These proposals “will ensure that ring-fenced banks are protected from shocks originating in other parts of their groups, as well as the broader financial system, and can be easily separated from their groups in the event of failure,” the BoE said in a statement.
Banks in the U.K. will be required to ring-fence their core retail activities from the riskier parts of their businesses starting in 2019. “Making our firms more resilient has been at the forefront of our post-crisis reform agenda. Today represents an important step forward in achieving this aim. We have provided clarity for affected banks on how we will implement ring-fencing and this will enable firms to take substantial steps forward in their preparations for structural reform,” said Andrew Bailey, deputy governor of the Bank of England and chief executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority, in a statement.