Rule changes proposed by FCA to boost investment

Under the current rules, introduced across Europe when the UK was in the EU, people buying investments like investment funds are supplied with standardised documents covering prescribed information.

In practice these documents were often complex, unclear, and could miss important points. This could put people off investing or lead them to make less informed decisions.

The FCA has proposed replacing this with a simpler and flexible system which is tailored to the UK. Firms will be given more choice about how, what and when they communicate.

The FCA has also set out some detailed requirements where it is really necessary to ensure consistency and comparability across the market to help consumers.

Under the proposals, new product information requirements would help consumers understand the products they are buying while giving firms flexibility to innovate.

Simon Walls, interim executive director of markets at the FCA, said:  

'The way people invest has changed. We want to ensure that firms can communicate with their customers in a way that gets them the information they need when they need it.

'High quality product information will give consumers the confidence to invest; increased participation in this market will not only benefit consumers but will also provide capital to drive the economy and boost growth.'

The proposals set out the FCA’s ambition of building a new, bolder regime, and it is open-minded about how it can be designed.

It welcomes views through the consultation about how best to design an outcomes-focused regulation that is fit for many years to come. 

Notes to editors

1. Read CP24/30: A new product information framework for Consumer Composite Investments[2].
2. Stakeholders are invited to respond to this paper by 20 March 2025.
3. More than 12.6 million UK investors (23% of all adults) hold an investment falling within what we call a Consumer Composite Investment (CCI), (FCA Financial Lives survey[3], 2024).
4. The Government and FCA are committed to replacing the EU-inherited regulation with a new flexible and proportionate product information framework tailored to UK markets and firms.
5. The consultation follows the Treasury’s action to replace the Packaged Retail and Insurance-based Investment Products (PRIIPs) Regulation and the Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities (UCITS) disclosure requirements with a more flexible, outcome-focused approach governed by the FCA.
6. The Treasury laid the final Statutory Instrument (SI) to give this effect on November 22, 2024. Products formerly under the PRIIPs regime and UCITS disclosure requirements, including funds in the Overseas Funds Regime (OFR), will now fall under the umbrella of CCIs. All CCI product information rules will be in the FCA Handbook.
7. The CCI regime includes products such as closed and open-ended investment funds, structured products, contracts for difference (CfDs), derivatives, and insurance-based investment products (IBIPs).