Our main legal powers and supervisory approach for firms where we have concerns, or to gather information on how firms are operating, identify risks, and ensure consumers are protected.
Our approach to regulating firms is proportionate to the size and complexity of the firms we supervise. As part of our supervision, we may contact firms to request information to support our market-wide work. For example, we may conduct multi-firm work or thematic reviews where we want to understand how a particular market is operating, how firms are applying our rules in practice, and whether there are emerging risks of harm. In these cases, we may ask firms to provide information or data so that we can build a broader picture of the market.
We may also ask your firm for information so that we can better understand your business model, how you operate, or where we have identified potential harm and want to explore this further. This could include questions about your products or services, governance arrangements, and how you monitor and manage risks to consumers. As part of this, we may carry out firm visits or hold supervisory calls to understand potential harms and risks to consumers, and to provide feedback on areas of improvement. We encourage firms to engage with us openly and constructively where we contact you in this way.
We also have formal powers that we can use where we identify concerns or potential risks of harm, for example, by imposing additional requirements or restrictions on a firm. This could include limiting a firm’s activities, requiring changes in the way it operates, directing the firm to take specific steps to reduce risk, or requiring redress where necessary. These powers allow us to act quickly to prevent consumer harm or address compliance issues.
These tools allow us to understand how firms are operating, investigate potential issues, and take steps to reduce risk where this is necessary.
