We are consulting on our proposed 2014/15 regulatory fees and levies for the FCA, the Financial Ombudsman Service (ombudsman service) general levy, and MoneyHelper (formerly the Money Advice Service).
Why are we consulting on this?
We are funded entirely by the fees and levies recovered from the firms we regulate – we receive no subsidies from other sources. The proposals in this CP will enable us to raise the funding for the FCA, the ombudsman (excluding case fees) and MoneyHelper (formerly the Money Advice Service) to meet their statutory objectives in 2014/15. This forms the second part of our consultation on 2014/15 fees.
In October, we consulted on proposed changes to the underlying policy of the fee and levy regimes of the FCA, the ombudsman service, and MoneyHelper (formerly the Money Advice Service). In this paper, we give our feedback to the responses we received to CP13/14 Regulatory fees and levies: policy proposals for 2014/15, published in October 2013.
We do not consult on any proposals affecting the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) in this CP.
Who is this Consultation Paper aimed at?
All fee-payers will be affected by this CP.
To help our new population of firms – consumer credit fee-payers – we have kept what affects them in only two chapters (6 and 7). We have provided two tables in the first chapter of the paper to help all other fee-payers identify what chapters are relevant to them. The CP contains no material directly relevant to retail financial services consumers or consumers groups, although, indirectly, fees are met by financial services consumers.
Errata
Please note two errors where the instruments do not reflect our policy as described in our feedback on consultation. We will make the corrections through an Administration Instrument in June:
- Appendix 2: Fees (Consumer Credit No 2) Instrument 2014: FEES 4 Annex 13G, Table 2, paragraph (7)(c) should be deleted to reflect the statement in paragraph 6.31 of the consultation paper that interchange charges have been excluded from the definition of consumer credit income. In addition, paragraph (7)(b) should be amended to read ‘... arrangement fees and credit card charges.’
- Appendix 3: Fees (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No 7) Instrument 2014: FEES 3 Annex 7R should not be deleted since we state in paragraph 8.17 that ‘we will retain the hourly charge for testing carried out when individual ARMs make changes to their systems as consulted in October 2008.’
What are the next steps?
We want to know what you think of our proposed 2014/15 fees and levies rates for the FCA periodic fees, FCA consumer credit fees, ombudsman service and MoneyHelper (formerly the Money Advice Service) levies. Please let us have your comments by 30 May 2014, by using our online response form[3] or by writing to us at the address on page 2.
We provide a facility on our website to enable firms to calculate their periodic fees for the forthcoming year based on the draft FCA, the ombudsman service and MoneyHelper (formerly the Money Advice Service) consultative rates in this CP. The fees calculator will also cover the Prudential Regulation Authority (where applicable) and FSCS levies. The fees calculator for 2014/15 fees and levies will be available from 31 March 2014 for firms to use.
We will consider your comments and subject to FCA Board approval in June, we plan to publish a Policy Statement, including feedback on those comments and final rules, at the end of June 2014.
Certain fee-payers have been invoiced from March 2014 for ‘on-account’ payments and other firms will be invoiced from July 2014, on the basis of the new fees and levies.
Want to find out more?
For more information, see:
- our Fees web pages[4]
- our How we raise our fees[5] paper
FCA fees review 2013/14
In this CP we also report on the outcome of the FCA Fees Review we carried out during 2013/14 and publish the report by BDO, the consultants we engaged to help us.