Manifesto 2025: Biba calls for regulatory improvements to drive growth

Proportionate regulation is vital to supporting the UK insurance broking sector in its mission to drive growth in the wider UK economy, said Biba in its latest 2025 manifesto, entitled Partnering to Deliver Value. 

In the document, which was launched at an event at the Houses of Parliament yesterday afternoon (15 January 2025), the broker trade body identified a number of regulatory issues for the UK broking sector, zeroing in on the regulation of commercial businesses, authorisations of new firms and the need for the FCA to streamline its regulatory rulebook. 

In a pre-launch briefing with Insurance Times, Biba chief executive Graeme Trudgill explained: ”I’ve been saying for a long time that proportionate regulation is key to delivering the government’s growth mission. 

”Working positively and constructively with the regulator has been a big mission for me because it’s supposed to support growth, not stop it or affect it negatively.” 

The organisation’s manifesto included a number of regulatory calls for action around specific issues. In the manifesto’s page describing the need to streamline regulatory requirements, Biba said that it would like the FCA to further its outcomes-based regulatory approach by continuing to review and streamline its handbook and provide greater support for firms via examples of good and poor practice. 

On the need for faster authorisations for new businesses, Biba said it wanted the government to review deadlines for the completion of regulatory applications and set more ambitious deadlines for completion in line with international regimes. 

Trudgill added: ”Speeding up authorisations is really important for us because these things all seem to take an inordinately long time – the FCA may be 98% on target, but the targets allow a really long time.

“What we actually need is better, more competitive architecture to help our economy grow overall.” 

Policy priorities

Biba’s 2025 manifesto includes its positions on a range of issues pertinent to the sector, but Trudgill said that its calls for action on regulation were a priority for the broker body. 

He explained: “We probably won’t get all of our regulatory objectives completed within a year, but I would love it if they could all be heading in the right direction and we get some of them over the line this year.

“Reducing the scope of the Consumer Duty is really important, quicker authorisations are really important.”

Alongside these issues, Biba’s manifesto also detailed its calls for the regulator to ease data collection regulatory requirements. It asked that the FCA optimised its reporting expectations for insurance brokers based on the size and scale of businesses, while also consolidating its information gathering asks to ease the disproportionate impact regulation was having on smaller firms. 

Growth objectives

Under its objectives for the regulatory regime, Biba also noted the importance of the FCA’s secondary international competitiveness and growth objective (Sigco).

The manifesto explained: “We believe that, for our sector, a key aspect of the regulator’s Sigco is greater regulatory proportionality, as this helps improve firms’ productivity and growth capabilities, while also encouraging investment in the UK.”

In its call for action on this point, Biba said that it wanted government and the regulator to introduce further metrics that allowed greater scrutiny of the Sigco that accounts for the impact on different firms’ sizes and showed international comparisons. 

At the Parliamentary launch of the document, Trudgill said that partnerships both within and outside of the industry were “key to this year’s manifesto in helping us achieve improved outcomes on the issues raised for everyone”.

He added: “We have a golden opportunity with the Sigco on the regulator to align with the government’s focus on growth.

“Improvements to the regulatory architecture can reduce the burden on firms and achieve a regulatory approach that supports growth.

“We know that our issues and the importance of insurance brokers have been recognised by government, with financial services being one of the eight priorities in its new industrial strategy.”