Brexit: Losing Our Passport

The recent vote in the United Kingdom to leave the European Union has raised a number of contingency planning issues for UK-based fi nancial institutions. The exact terms of the deal negotiated between the EU and the UK will be vital to understanding what fi nancial institutions will need to do to prepare for Brexit (by which we mean the UK leaving the EU and moving to a new relationship with the trading bloc). There is therefore still a great deal of uncertainty about which regulations and restrictions UK-based fi nance institutions will need to cope with after Brexit.

This note aims to look at a worst case scenario, by asking the question: How will your business or your client's businesses be affected if the UK loses all passporting rights to sell services into the EU? This situation would only occur if the UK did not move to an EEA model and instead chose some form of hard Brexit.