We are setting out the new structure for authorisation application fees that comes into effect from 24 January 2022.
Most of our application fees have not changed in nearly 20 years. Inflation has eroded their value, leaving authorised firms paying an increasing proportion of our processing costs for authorisation applications through their periodic fees. We have more than 80 separate charges for FCA applications, which is confusing.
We have condensed the charges into 10 simple pricing categories. We have revalorised them in line with inflation from the date of their introduction and then moved them up or down to the nearest pricing category.
We believe that the overall impact of our proposals would raise the contribution of applicants towards the cost of processing their applications from about a third to about two-thirds. We consider this a fairer apportionment in principle, though there would not be a large practical impact on existing fee-payers.
This Policy Statement (PS) applies to all FCA fee-payers and to any businesses considering applying for FCA authorisation or registration.
It is not directly relevant to retail financial services consumers, although our fees are indirectly paid by users of financial services.
This PS follows our consultation in November 2020. We summarised the feedback we received in Chapter 7 of our April 2021 consultation.
The new structure for authorisation application fees comes into effect from 24 January 2022. See our new application fees page for information on the new pricing categories.
We also consulted on introducing a new charge for applications under the senior managers regime (SMR) and controlled functions for appointed representatives (CF(AR)). We will give further notice before we implement this.