By Karen Northey, Director of Corporate Affairs at the Investment Association
The Chancellor has set out an ambitious agenda to ensure the UK’s financial services sector continues to flourish and play its role in delivering economic growth. Our industry strongly supports her commitment to recalibrate risk and acknowledgement of the importance of investment to grow the economy.
The new remit letters to the regulator rightly emphasise the importance of growth and competitiveness. The FCA’s secondary objective is central to ensuring the UK remains a world-leading centre – not just for investment management – but for innovation and wellbeing of all, and we are pleased to see the Chancellor recognise that appropriate risk in the system is a positive and growth-oriented necessity.
We want to ensure the UK remains an attractive place for companies to list, invest and do business. This requires a rebalancing of attitude towards risk. Proposals to broaden access to private markets through PISCES and plans to make the UK a leading centre for green finance indicate a positive shift towards a growth-focused mindset. We are also pleased to see the government championing innovation by delivering on its plans to introduce a digital gilt – a key recommendation of the Asset Management Task Force’s work on tokenisation. As technology continues to evolve, speed and regulatory responsiveness will be critical to the success of these initiatives.
Ensuring our pensions system is fit for purpose will be mission critical in securing the financial futures of millions across our country. The proposals to further consolidate both the LGPS and DC master trusts are an important step. To fully realise the benefit, we must ensure that we deliver ‘sophisticated scale’ – placing an emphasis on strong governance, accountability and appropriate investment expertise to deliver the most productive outcomes and create value for money for savers. With an ambitious approach, this could channel more pensions capital into fast-growing businesses and infrastructure projects.
Today’s announcements mark the welcome start of a bold reform programme and we believe even more can be achieved. We look forward to continuing to engage with government over the coming months, to help establish a culture of inclusive investment and create a world-leading economy and investment management sector.
