The UK Financial Conduct Authority has recently published the minutes for the board meeting held on 29 April 2021. Firms may be interested to see that the board was briefed on “concerns around whether the [FCA] has sufficient appetite for taking legal risks”.
The FCA’s board “recognised that legal risk was one of many factors to be considered when deciding on the appropriate action for the FCA to take”. It therefore supported proposals to “recalibrate the degree of legal risk the organisation is willing to take, how to implement this in practice and the inclusion of legal risk appetite/tolerance in the FCA’s Own Risk framework”.
It remains to be seen what impact this recalibration will have on the FCA’s approach to enforcement. But firms will need to remain alive to any changes to the FCA’s risk appetite.