Price discrimination is widespread across financial services. Often this will not be a concern, this paper highlights when it may and how to make the assessment.
Show Occasional Paper 22: Price discrimination and cross-subsidy in financial services (PDF 2MB)
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Summary
We are publishing this paper to build a common understanding of our approach to certain pricing practices. This paper sets out the underlying economic principles and policy considerations relevant to the analysis of price discrimination and cross subsidy to help understanding of when intervention may or may not be appropriate. It illustrates this discussion with examples from retail financial markets, based on recent work undertaken by the FCA and other regulators.
Authors
Pete Lukacs, Leslie Neubecker and Philip Rowan.
The authors work in the Strategy and Competition Division of the Financial Conduct Authority.
Disclaimer
Occasional Papers contribute to the work of the FCA by providing rigorous research results and stimulating debate. While they may not necessarily represent the position of the FCA, they are one source of evidence that the FCA may use while discharging its functions and to inform its views. The FCA endeavours to ensure that research outputs are correct, through checks including independent referee reports, but the nature of such research and choice of research methods is a matter for the authors using their expert judgement. To the extent that Occasional Papers contain any errors or omissions, they should be attributed to the individual authors, rather than to the FCA.