The FCA's Proactive Enforcement Approach Exacerbates Growing Case Backlog

On 20 July 2023, the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published its Annual Report and Accounts for the year ending March 2023 (the "Report").¹ The Report represents the first opportunity to assess progress made in the three-year strategy set out by the FCA in April 2022 and supplemented by its annual business plan.²

Although the Report and the linked enforcement statistics reflect an increasingly proactive regulator, they also point to a growing backlog of investigations amid calls for additional resources to tackle what the FCA Chair calls a "vast swath of responsibilities" covering "an unprecedented set of challenges and opportunities".

Focus on Financial Crime

As part of an effort to ensure the efficient use of resources, the FCA announced in April 2023 that it would allocate any additional resources to four of its 13 priorities:³