Sam Woods: Competing for growth
Speech by Mr Sam Woods, Deputy Governor for Prudential Regulation of the Bank of England and Chief Executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), at the Mansion House, London, 17 October 2024.
The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.
Regulation, competitiveness and growth
A lot has been said about the UK financial regulators' new secondary competitiveness and growth objective, so I hesitate to add to the chat. Our focus is on actions because they are said to speak louder than words. However, it is regularly reported to me that some stakeholders doubt that we are taking any meaningful action to deliver our new objective – and from this I have learned that sometimes in life it is necessary to tell people what actions you are taking, as well as taking them!
I will also attempt a little myth-busting, because I have observed that the debate on regulation can be dominated by extremes. On the one hand, it is surprisingly often asserted that the regulators are trying to remove all risk from the system and don't care about their impact on the wider economy. It is easy to demonstrate that this is nonsense. On the other hand, it's simply not true that any change to our regulations will unleash financial mayhem, and there is plenty in our regime that can be improved without undermining stability.
So if you take only two things from this speech, I hope they are these:
- first, that we are strongly committed to our new objective, and are taking concrete steps to improve our regime's contribution to UK growth and competitiveness;
- and second, that we are going about this in a careful, balanced way – reducing bureaucratic processes and some excess conservatism while preserving financial stability.