FCA launches survey on credit broking market
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has begun asking brokers how they are using their regulatory permissions as part of its wider work on the credit market.
The City watchdog has sent questionnaires to 300 authorised credit broking firms.
The regulator said it will inform a larger survey to all regulated credit broking firms later this year.
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“The preliminary 300 firms have been selected using a variety of metrics, enabling a broad range of firms holding credit broking permissions to be included,” the FCA said.
“The pilot should not take firms more than 30 minutes to complete. They will include questions relating to volumes of regulated transactions in a 12-month period, projections of regulated transactions for the next year as well as asking firms to further detail the nature of their activities.”
The FCA said it is not mandatory to complete the survey but added that it may ask firms for reasons why they didn’t complete it.
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“Supervision may contact you to find out whether you are having any difficulties completing the survey,” the FCA said.
“In some cases, we may choose to use the FCA’s statutory powers to request this information, if we consider that a response from your firm is necessary for our work to mitigate the risks of harm to consumers.”
After the pilot, the survey will be sent to all firms holding the permission of credit broking, which is around 32,000 firms.
The National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers (NACFB) said it was in dialogue with the FCA about the survey.
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