Horizon Scanning: Anticipating and Reacting to a New Governmental Direction with Gavin Stewart & Hanbury Hampden-Turner – S1E10

Horizon Scanning: Anticipating and Reacting to a New Governmental Direction with Gavin Stewart & Hanbury Hampden-Turner – S1E10

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcast

Listen on Amazon Music

Listen on Google Podcast

Listen on other Podcast Platforms

Hosted By Jawad Akhtar

Guests

Hanbury Hampden-turner, Head of regulatory Capital- VERMEG

Gavin Stewart, Director, Grant Thornton UK LLP

Episode show notes

A new calendar year is nearly upon us, and with a new Prime Minister comes governmental change that could easily affect the trends and patterns emerging in UK regulation.

 

Joining us on FinTalk to clear the fog on the horizon and look at what the industry may have in store, we hear from Gavin Stewart – Director at Grant Thornton LLP – and a returning guest, VERMEG’s Hanbury Hampden-Turner.

 

We hear how Big Bang 2.0 indicates a sharp change in direction, why shifts may be slower than expected, the overarching themes surrounding market risk, and much more.

 

This episode of The VERMEG podcast covers:

  • The biggest changes we’re likely to see with the new governmental direction
  • Patterns forming with ESG-based policy and legislation
  • Overarching themes around market risk, more granular data and temporary measures becoming permanent
  • How firms might guide their client base through the cost of living crisis

Episode highlights

“Since Liz Truss became PM and Kwasi Kwarteng became chancellor, we do have some signs of what they want to do. I think there seems to be a pretty clear change of direction – we’ve heard about Big Bang 2.0.” – 3:00 – Gavin Stewart

 

“The biggest legislative thing by far is obviously the Financial Services and Markets Bill. We’ll have to see how that travels through, but I think it’s going to be more controversial than it would have been three or four months ago. ” – 4:20 – Gavin Stewart 

 

“I think things will be slow-ish to start; the new Prime Minister surely has more urgent things to deal with than the details of financial services legislation. So while the intentions will steam ahead, the detail may lag a bit.” – 6:20 – Hanbury Hampden-Turner

 

“We’re seeing a lot more about social policy objectives, environmental objectives, and environmental evaluations going into some of the traditional financial areas. So raising bonds based upon their environmental impact, that kind of thing. That doesn’t have to wait for primary legislation.” – 7:15 – Hanbury Hampden-Turner

 

“All the work that we’re doing is fundamental, fairly obvious, and set out on the grid. I still have this big question mark as to how much of that will be overtaken by events?” – 11:10 – Gavin Stewart 

 

“I think a lot of the temporary measures that we’ve been treated with are likely to become permanent. I don’t think the COVID legislation is going away anytime soon. I think the temporary measures are likely to become permanent, in the same way that the support for SMEs just after the financial crisis became permanent.” – 12:05 – Hanbury Hampden-Turner

 

“I think solvency is at the crux of a lot of these debates around what’s the role of the regulator as opposed to the direction the government wants to go with. The PRA has been as clear as it can be as a regulator. I think that it sees most, if not all, of the standards in solvency as still being needed.” – 15:30 – Gavin Stewart 

 

“The use of more granular data in insurance is likely to come back into banking as well. They’ve already started trying to change the granularity of credit rating information that’s used. It might be a trivial change to some, but it’s a huge, huge deal.” – 16:50 – Hanbury Hampden-Turner

FOLLOW US