As part of the Treasury Committee’s ‘Sexism in the City’ inquiry on 17 January, Sara Pritchard, FCA Executive Director for Markets and International, confirmed the regulator would be intensifying its efforts to tackle non-financial misconduct across the City. In a survey we understand will be launched soon, the FCA will be requesting in-scope firms to disclose numbers of complaints of non-financial misconduct across their workplaces, as well as details around their methods of detection and resolution, including the use of NDAs related to such cases. 

"We are quite deliberately going out with that supervisory work program right now, so we can use what it tells us to say what is best practice at the end of this piece of work and also, crucially, to inform our supervisory program when the new rule sets come into place" 

- Sarah Pritchard, Executive Director for Markets and International, FCA

Whilst we await further details from the regulator in terms of scope, whether the data will ultimately be made public and proposed timing for disclosure, we understand the survey will cover wholesale insurance intermediaries and broking, alongside banks and insurers, and the FCA will be looking to complete the data collation by the end of Summer 2024. 

The regulator has also commented that it is keen to understand how quickly cases of non-financial misconduct are resolved and the extent to which NDAs are used in relation to these incidents.

This follows the regulator’s 2023 consultation seeking to boost diversity and inclusion across the sector, proposing wide-ranging changes to the way in which firms tackle incidents of non-financial misconduct and new rules and guidance focussing on bullying and sexual harassment, and how firms should take action against employees for such behaviours. You can read more about these proposals here. 

In the meantime, if you would like to speak with a member of our team about these developments, do get in touch.