Enforcement during lockdown and beyond

How active have the UK regulators been onthe enforcement side during the pandemic? Nathan Willmott and AdamJamieson discuss caseload statistics, remote interviews and the outlook forthe remainder of 2021.

Nathan Willmott is European leader forthe Litigation & Investigationsdepartment, and co-head of the Global Investigations practice, at Bryan CaveLeighton Paisner. Adam Jamieson is a partner in the firm’s Disputes& Investigations team.Contact them on nathan.willmott@bclplaw.com andadam.jamieson@bclplaw.com.

Over the past year, our experience is that bothof the United Kingdom’s financial regulators, the Financial Conduct Authorityand the Prudential Regulation Authority, have continued to be very active onenforcement investigations and that – save for a brief hiatus at the start ofthe first lockdown – the pandemic has not disrupted this in any significantway. Information disclosed by the FCA confirms this, with 121 new cases openedin the nine-month period to October 2020 – of which 76 were commenced followingthe implementation of Covid-19 restrictions in March. We have also seen the FCAbeing active on case closures, and the statistics bear out that the number ofopen FCA investigations now appears to have plateaued at around 650 (after asteep rise over recent years). This is still an unmanageably large number ofinvestigations for the FCA to handle effectively, the consequences of which wediscuss later.