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FCA Wants to Tighten Grip on Regulated Firms to Better Shield Customer Cash

The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced plans to strengthen safeguarding regulations for payments and e-money firms to better protect customers in case of business failures. The FCA aims to replace the existing e-money safeguarding regime with a client assets framework tailored to the business models of payments firms. Funds held by payments and e-money firms are not directly protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), so the proposed changes seek to improve the safeguarding system and ensure customers can recover their money quickly if a firm fails. The FCA's consultation on the changes is open until December 17, 2024. Additionally, the FCA is working with the UK government to reform capital markets and is seeking input from the investment trust industry on changing cost disclosure regulations. The FCA also reported on its regulatory enforcement actions, including correcting or withdrawing promotions by authorized firms and issuing alerts about unauthorized entities, particularly clone scams.

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