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Britain’s financial defender will encourage retail investors to take more risk with their savings to address the challenge of an aging population as a major part of a new five-year strategy this week.
Ashley Alder, head of the Financial Behavior Authority, told Financial Times, its new plan is built to help consumers make higher returns from their savings and increasing trust in financial markets by capturing fraud.
“One thing we have focused on a large part of building a strategy is the demographic challenge. The provision for later life (is) a large part of it,” Alder said in an interview a few days before the new strategy on Tuesday.
Alder also threw his support after FCA Nikhil Rathi’s chief executive, saying “He is the right person to move us forward”. Rathi’s five-year mandate ends in September and there has been speculation if he could leave.
FCA, which regulates financial services firms, protects consumers and stimulates competition, has been pressured by Sir Starmer’s government to ease the burden of the red bar and encourages more risk.
Alder said FCA will support the government’s attempt to make the growing growth regulators by opening less, more intended investigations, using artificial intelligence to detect wrongdoing and being more selective in data requires from financial firms.
The UK Population Population – the number of people of retirement age is expected to increase 14 percent by 2032 – focuses on “the ability of people to have good income in later life,” Alder said.
To address this concern, FCA would focus on a “risk re -risk”, which Alder described as “the risk of not setting, for example, participate in or enter financial products or services that may lead to larger long -term returns”.
As part of this impetus, the government is already thinking of regulating the rules in cash savings accounts without tax without encouraging people to shift more money to higher return investments such as shares and bonds.
FCA has also proposed allowing pension holders to receive “target support” from companies make generic suggestions under a easier regulatory framework. He hopes this will fill a gap in financial advice to people who are not rich.
Alder withdrew against concerns that his pro-growth approach would mean less protection for people. “It’s not an exchange, or an/or, of consumer protection or growth,” he said. “We want to supply retail customers with much better tools to do this that is informed of the risk.”
The new regulator strategy will include “a serious emphasis on financial crime and fraud throughout the sector,” Alder said, adding that this was a key element in increasing consumer confidence in financial markets and the regulator itself.
“If you were able to increase confidence in the system and therefore increase the level of participation in products and services, you would clearly end with a greater level of savings by turning into market investments,” he said.
FCA has opened fewer investigations in the last two years and has closed a lot in its existing pipeline in an effort to concentrate its resources in “cases that present the greatest risk of damage,” Alder said. Being more selective, he expected her to keep the number of implementation actions steadily or even increase them.
Another shift to the FCA strategy is to prepare for an erosion of global coordination in financial regulation, stemming from protectionism and trade tensions. “It is clear that we have experienced a shift from globalization. The word protectionism is high in the agenda,” he said.
In response is likely to focus on “engaging with a smaller set of jurisdictions with the same mind,” said Alder, who was the leader of Hong Kong’s market supervisor and headed the International Insurance Committee Organization before joining FCA in 2023.
