Our strategic objective is to ensure financial services markets function well.

Our operational objectives are to:

• secure an appropriate degree of protection for consumers
• protect and enhance the integrity of the UK financial system
• promote effective competition in the interests of consumers

We will soon also have a new secondary objective to facilitate the international competitiveness of the UK economy and its growth in the medium to long term. This is being introduced as part of the Financial Services and Markets Bill which is currently going through Parliament.

As a financial services regulator, we have an important role in the continued success of the UK financial services markets and their contribution to the UK economy.

When markets are efficiently and proportionately regulated and firms are able to compete and innovate in a safe, trusted and stable environment, it benefits consumers and investors, and it ensures the UK economy, including financial services, sustains its international competitiveness.

We fully embrace this secondary objective as already significantly in line with our approach. We will further increase our focus on international competitiveness and growth in delivering our primary objectives, while ensuring that there is no compromise on consumer protection, market integrity or competition in the interests of consumers.

Our work includes improving the attractiveness and global reach of our wholesale markets. This includes using the opportunity created by the transfer of retained EU law; sharpening our operational effectiveness through continued improvements to our authorizations processes; and providing opportunities for UK financial services companies to invest, innovate and expand in the UK through our Sandboxes, Innovation Pathways process, leadership of the Global Financial Innovation Network and TechSprint programmes.

Accountability is a key part of ensuring we as a regulator deliver what is expected of us. We will report each year on how we’re delivering our new secondary objective and are developing how best to measure our success. As international competitiveness and growth are affected by wider Government policy (such as tax and labor markets policy), monetary policy and economic conditions, we will focus on measuring those aspects we can influence directly, and which are relevant to our policy decisions and explain where relevant to the interactions with other areas of Government policy. We will focus on the key drivers of productivity and will explain how we expect our actions and outputs to facilitate international competitiveness and growth.