On June 23, the House of Commons published a statement made by the UK Government on its approach to implementing financial services regulatory reforms before the end of the Brexit transition period (the Statement).

Generally, the Statement appears to suggest that the UK will not follow upcoming EU regulations on how financial transactions must be settled. The UK Government clarified that firms should continue to apply the industry’s existing practices rather than the EU rules. Furthermore, any legislative changes in this space will be developed through dialogue with the financial services industry.

In particular, the Statement sets out the UK Government’s approach to the following financial services legislation:

1. the Financial Services Bill that provides a new prudential regime for investments firms and updates regulations for credit institutions;

2. the new Investment Firms Prudential Regime (for more information on this regime and the Financial Service Bill, please see the June 26, 2020 edition of Corporate & Financial Weekly Digest;

3. the Fifth Capital Requirements Directive (CRDV);

4. the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive II (BRRD II)

5. the Solvency II Directive;

6. the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR);

7. the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR);

8. the European Market Infrastructure Regulation Refit Regulation (EMIR REFIT);

9. the Benchmarks Regulation (BMR);

10. the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR); and

11. legislation in relation to packaged retail investment and insurance-based products (PRIIPs).

The Statement is available here.