The FCA says it will move without waiting for legislation
Victoria Shinder2 min readIn a speech published by the FCA, the regulator argues that the United Kingdom must move faster to let the next generation of market infrastructure scale domestically: https://www.fca.org.uk/news/speeches/building-next-generation-market-infrastructure.
The reasoning given is competitive rather than technological. The UK's advantages are listed as a deep financial centre, sophisticated markets, trusted institutions and a strong legal system - and against those, exchanges, banks, investors, fintechs and policymakers elsewhere are described as investing heavily in the same direction. The stated conclusion is that nobody needs to predict what the market of 2030 or 2035 looks like, but the conditions for those technologies to scale have to be created much faster, going as far as possible even where legislation cannot immediately follow.
Two forces are named. AI is described as changing how participants analyse information and manage risk, raising questions about technology infrastructure and operational resilience, and challenging assumptions about when markets operate at all. Tokenisation is presented as potentially making business quicker and cheaper and opening new routes to capital formation.
What it means
"Go as far as we can even if legislation cannot" is the sentence to keep. It is a regulator saying it will use the discretion it already has rather than wait for a statute - which is both the fastest lever available to it and the least durable, because what supervisory discretion grants, supervisory discretion can revisit.
Naming operating hours as an open question is more radical than naming tokenisation. Tokenisation changes how a trade settles; continuous operation changes what a market day is, and with it clearing windows, risk management and the staffing of every firm that has to be there when it is open.
⚠️ A speech is a statement of intent, not a rule. No consultation, instrument or date is reported here, and the estimate of benefits referenced in the text is attributed to third parties rather than to the FCA.