18 December 2018
Earlier this year, the Government appointed Sir John Kingman to lead an independent review of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC).
The review was put in place to assess the effectiveness of the FRC’s governance, impact and powers, including whether the existing arrangement for the regulation of actuaries operating in the UK was still fit for purpose.
Today saw the publication of the Kingman review. The recommendations have been published.
Kingman recommends that the FRC should be replaced with a new statutory body (Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority). It’s suggested that this new body should not take on the oversight of actuarial regulation. At this stage, there is no clear recommendation on where oversight of actuarial regulation will sit. It is now for the government to decide on which recommendations to take up and where the FRC’s responsibilities, as the IFoA’s oversight body, will be transferred. The IFoA will be engaging fully with government and other interested parties, to inform and support the process.
FRC’s current role in actuarial regulation
Since the 2005 Morris Review, the FRC has, by agreement with the IFoA, been responsible for three functions relating to the regulation of actuaries in the UK:
• Independent oversight of IFoA regulation in the UK (including the IFoA qualifications system);
• Setting of Technical Actuarial Standards (TASs) in relation to UK actuarial work (the IFoA is responsible for all ethical/conduct standards, including the Actuaries’ Code); and
• Disciplinary enforcement in relation to cases involving IFoA members that potentially give rise to “important issues affecting the public interest in the UK” (the IFoA deals with other disciplinary cases through its Disciplinary Scheme).