Speech by Sarah Pritchard, deputy chief executive, at Investment Association Annual Dinner 2026.
Headshot of Sarah Pritchard
Speaker: Sarah Pritchard, deputy chief executive
Event: Investment Association Annual Dinner 2026, Guildhall, City of London
Delivered: 20 October 2026
Note: This is a drafted speech and may differ from the delivered version.
Reading time: 6 minutes
Highlights
- In an ever-changing environment, our strategy is our anchor. Our priorities – supporting growth, being a smarter regulator, helping consumers and fighting financial crime – help us decide consistently and act for the long term.
- While we are past the peak of rule making, we are still taking a deliberate, strategic approach to reform rather than taking a piecemeal approach.
- We encourage firms to engage with us. Tell us where the friction lies so we can build a system that works together.
Look around.
This building has stood for more than 600 years. It’s survived both the Great Fire and the Blitz.
And yet it still endures. Because when it had to be, it was rebuilt deliberately.
That’s the lesson I want to borrow tonight.
The world around Guildhall looks nothing like it did – and neither does your industry. Technology and AI mean markets are changing faster, and more fundamentally, than ever before.
But one thing is constant.
Markets have always been rooted in trust.
Trust is fundamental to the success of your sector.
And it is a successful sector.
London ranks second globally in the Global Financial Centres Index, just behind New York.
And millions trust you with their savings. Their pensions. Their very futures.
Total assets under management have now reached £16.5tn – that’s nearly 5 times the UK’s GDP.
But success is no reason to stand still.
Reform: more than writing rules
In this sector, we’re just past peak rule making.
The scale of change has been significant – and deliberate.
But we’re not done yet.
We want to see growth that benefits consumers, supports competitiveness and spurs innovation.
Building a stronger retail investment culture takes more than piecemeal rule writing.
It takes a strategic approach.
One that starts with giving consumers the support they need to make informed financial decisions.
And understand both the risks of acting – and the costs of not acting.
In that vein, we have reformed our advice and guidance rules.
We’ve introduced targeted support.
And we’ve moved away from prescriptive disclosures, and placed greater emphasis on outcomes through the Consumer Duty[1].
We want to further support innovation and give firms the confidence to offer more forms of simplified advice at lower cost to consumers.
So we’ll soon publish updated rules, alongside case studies we’ve developed with the Financial Ombudsman Service.
We’re already seeing real progress.
Just 6 months in, more than a dozen firms are already authorised to deliver targeted support.
And early signs are promising: consumers who receive it invest up to 53% more[2] than those who don’t.
These reforms have taken time and effort – from your teams, and mine.
But it’s well worth it.
Our report card
Last year we set out a new 5-year strategy[3].
To support growth, be a smarter regulator, help consumers navigate their financial lives and fight financial crime.
These aren’t separate goals. Each one helps us do our job of making markets work well.
We’re pleased with the progress we’ve made so far.
- Our latest Practitioner Panel survey found that three quarters of firms have high trust in us, and the same proportion support our strategy.
- More than 7 in 10 agree our work enhances the UK’s reputation as a financial centre.
- And nearly 9 in 10 now understand the Consumer Duty’s requirements – a big change from last year.
But we know there’s more to do.
Which is why we’ll stay focused on reducing burden, including by simplifying data returns.
And expand our innovation services, where applications rose 89%[4] in the first year of our strategy.
From our Scale-up Unit to our AI sandboxes, we’re helping firms access funding, test new ideas and innovate more quickly.
And we’ll keep sharing what we learn to help firms innovate effectively.
Challenges ahead
Still, financial crime remains a challenge – at home and abroad.
In the UK, investment fraud losses alone rose 40%[5] in 2025.
And that’s despite us being ever more assertive.
We’re securing more criminal convictions than ever before across fraud, money laundering and insider dealing.
Last year, we issued over 2,300 scam and unauthorised firm warnings.
And in recent weeks, we’ve made 3 arrests[6] as part of a major insider dealing investigation and helped the Metropolitan Police[7] disrupt a suspected serious organised crime network.
But intervention is just part of the equation.
Regulator and industry alike have to help consumers use financial services safely.
The Investment Association has Savvy the Squirrel to help build confidence to invest.
And we have Emil the Seal to point people to our Firm Checker[8].
Since its launch in January, consumers have used it nearly 2 million times to make sure firms are authorised and genuine.
A partnership between Emil and Savvy could be a powerful one, especially if firms point consumers to Firm Checker.
What is clear is that with the speed and scale of this threat, we can’t do this on our own.
This fight calls for a system-wide response – because scams undermine trust, market integrity and consumer confidence.
So work with us.
In July, we published our review of financial crime controls in asset management and alternatives.
We found good practice and room for improvement – particularly in higher-risk areas, such as private markets.
Our message is clear: tailor your financial crime controls to the risks.
Our ask is clear, too: share intelligence early. Flag the gaps in the system. And help us stop criminals exploiting them.
It’s how markets stay trusted and confident.
Working differently to support a changing world
Change is happening at a breakneck speed.
More technology. More cross-border activity. More innovation.
All moving faster than traditional regulation can keep up with.
Which is why we’re not just regulating for the market as it is today. We’re future-proofing it.
By setting clear, outcomes-focused standards, using better data to spot emerging risks and keeping our rules under review as markets evolve.
That approach keeps us open-minded in the face of change.
And our regulation and rulebook proportionate and fit for the future.
Take the package of reforms we consulted on this summer. By streamlining the rulebook for asset managers, we could save firms £128m per year.
Our proposed fund reporting framework is part of that: simpler reporting for firms, better data for us to consider as we review our rules and see how markets are operating.
We’re collecting responses[9] until Thursday, so there’s still time to have your say.
I’ve always said we can’t regulate just for yesterday’s challenges. We have to let markets evolve.
And we are.
We worked previously to support industry and IA-led blueprints for fund tokenisation.
Now, we’re helping firms put them into practice.
Baillie Gifford tested the technology behind its tokenised fund in our regulatory sandbox. That fund was authorised in under a year.
Next month, our joint tokenisation roadmap with the Bank of England will set the path from testing to lasting infrastructure for markets as a whole.
But change also demands preparation.
With T+1 settlement less than a year away, we are focused on this sector’s readiness.
So be prepared – because we will act if you’re not.
After all, market integrity is at stake.
Getting outcomes-focused regulation right means you don’t need to wait for new rules to innovate.
And this will move us beyond a cycle of constant rule making to one of us checking that our rules work as intended.
We already do this regularly.
You’ve seen it in the removal of rules requiring a 7-day delay in initial public offerings.
Our review of the Consumer Duty’s application to wholesale markets.
And our Advice Guidance Boundary Review and unbundling of research rules.
You’ve also just heard me say we’re just past the peak of rule making.
While it may not feel like it yet, it will eventually – I promise!
When it does, our focus will be clear.
Keep what works. Fix what doesn’t. And keep growth and innovation at the centre of it.
Becoming the regulator of the future
Being the right kind of regulator means being right for today and tomorrow.
Later this week at Mansion House, our chief executive will speak about what a changing world means for modern regulators.
The same question applies here.
There are more opportunities – for firms and criminals – than ever before. And we have to meet them differently.
By making better use of data and technology and focusing our supervision where risk actually sits.
AI already helps us cut through large data sets to identify risks sooner and act more quickly.
We'll keep exploring where we can go from here. Because we don’t know what tomorrow holds.
But we know we have to be a regulator that moves as fast as the market does, without losing the judgement that makes us worth trusting.
And you have to be an industry that’s just as intentional. One that moves quickly where it counts, without losing sight of the people who depend on you.
