Every story in this edition, newest first.
New UK mortgage lending is moving towards higher loan-to-value bands while the older loan book is producing fewer arrears, so the risk signal depends on whether the reader measures originations or outstanding balances.
PISCES, the FCA's new intermittent-trading venue for private company shares, lets firms decide when their stock trades, who can buy it and at what price, betting that founder control can revive a stalled London listing pipeline.
On 2 September the Bank's repo lending stood at £208.7 billion against £643.7 billion of reserves. A year of quantitative tightening has removed gilts without shrinking the reserves it was meant to drain.
The design phase ends in 2026, and the blueprint, the Treasury's joint assessment and the decision on next steps all arrive together. Governor Andrew Bailey has already said he questions why a retail central bank digital currency is needed if commercial banks modernise money themselves.
Abolishing the technology department turned AI oversight from a departmental science function into a centre-of-government one. The AI Security Institute's own website still names the department that closed in July.
The NCSC's 2026 guidance on agentic AI reads like network security. Read closely, it is the nearest thing Britain has to a deployment gate for autonomous AI, and it is being written in controls rather than statute.
The regulator's second AI Live Testing cohort, from Barclays and Lloyds to UBS and Experian, is running real models in UK markets. The FCA's verdict lands in an evaluation report in early 2027, built on Consumer Duty and senior-manager accountability rather than a bespoke AI rulebook.
The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 lets the Treasury extend the same compulsion into savings, pensions and consumer credit under the banner of Open Finance, and whether it works turns on a commercial model Open Banking never had.
Nearly two years after the FCA's access-to-cash regime took effect, more than 230 shared banking hubs are open against a promised 350. They protect notes and coins for the five million who need them, not the full-service branch they replace.
The Pension Schemes Act 2026 is law and the megafund story dominates, but the sharper lever is the Value for Money framework: a four-tier rating, from dark green to red, that can close a poor default and move savers out without their consent. Its rules are still in consultation, the teeth do not bite until around 2029, and the test itself is not yet finalised.
From 1 September a single new rule, COCON 1.1.7FR, extends the FCA's conduct code from client money and market behaviour to serious bullying, harassment and violence between colleagues, and it reaches thousands of non-bank firms that only banks faced before. The change plugs workplace conduct into fitness-and-propriety tests, breach reporting and portable regulatory references.
The Prudential Regulation Authority has finalised its Basel 3.1 rules for a 1 January 2027 start, with the fully loaded 72.5 per cent output floor phased in by 2030 and the market-risk internal models deferred to 2028. The rulebook meant to be identical everywhere now looks distinctly British, because Washington has reopened its own version and Brussels has delayed the trading-book rules.
The Financial Conduct Authority brought Britain's buy-now-pay-later market under consumer-credit regulation on 15 July 2026, giving eleven million regular users the same protections that apply to credit cards and personal loans. The transition period for firms to obtain full authorisation runs until January 2027, but the rules are in force today.
On a single Monday in the autumn of 2027, the UK, the European Union and Switzerland will compress the time it takes to settle a share trade from two working days to one. The coordinated date is a rare piece of cross-Channel alignment, and it hands the City a fixed operational countdown that runs through the whole of 2026.
Net mortgage approvals climbed to 58,200 in June and house prices are still edging up, but with the MPC holding Bank Rate at 3.75% on a 6-3 vote and three members pushing for 4%, Britain's mortgage market is running into a rate path that offers borrowers no near-term relief.
The PSR's mandatory reimbursement regime, one year on: an independent evaluation puts in-scope fraud losses down about £73m a year and roughly 35,000 fewer scams, for a short-term net benefit of £17m to £29m. The cost of getting there has moved onto banks and payment providers, split 50/50 between sending and receiving firms.
A policy statement published on 11 August 2026 finishes a quiet but structural reform: the Financial Ombudsman Service will stop acting as a second, looser standard-setter, and complaints will be judged against the rules the regulator actually wrote.
Identity verification under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 is compulsory for the six to seven million people already registered as UK company directors and persons with significant control. The transition period closes on 18 November 2026, but because each person's deadline is tied to their company's confirmation statement, most fall due well before then.
The FCA's motor finance redress scheme hits its central operational gate on Monday 31 August, the deadline for lenders to have Scheme 1 running, opening Britain's biggest consumer payout since PPI at roughly 9.1 billion pounds across 12.1 million agreements.
The Treasury's consultation on ring-fencing reform, open until 8 September, proposes a Growth Allowance that would let retail banks carry up to 10 per cent of their credit-risk capital in the wholesale and investment business the post-2008 wall was built to keep out.
A second phase of the FCA's insurance simplification would narrow where its conduct rules bite, strip out several disclosures and redenominate cover limits into sterling. The consultation closes on 4 September, and the changes are meant to land with almost no transition.
The FCA's authorisation gateway is expected to open on 30 September 2026 and close on 28 February 2027, the five-month on-ramp to a regime that becomes mandatory on 25 October 2027. Firms still cannot fully map which of their activities fall inside the perimeter.
Public sector net borrowing was £1.8 billion in July, up £0.7 billion on a year earlier, and cumulative borrowing since April now sits £2.3 billion above the OBR forecast, narrowing the Chancellor's room before the autumn Budget.
Britain has published its own sustainability reporting standards, built on the global ISSB baseline, and the FCA is preparing to bolt them onto the listing rules, so that from 2027 roughly 515 large UK companies report climate risk against a single international benchmark rather than the older TCFD framework, with Scope 3 and wider sustainability disclosure phased in behind it.
