In March the Bank of England, the Prudential Regulation Authority, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Payment Systems Regulator established the Financial Services Regulatory Initiatives Forum to help them spot and manage peaks in demand and to tell firms about pressing regulatory initiatives. This forum has now introduced something that it calls the Regulatory Initiatives Grid.

Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was the first to mention the Government's plans for the new initiative in his Budget Speech in March, but did so vaguely. He has brought forward the appearence of this 'grid' to help firms that are struggling to cope with the effects of the Coronavirus.

The 'grid,' despite its peculiar name, is a publication. It lays out the planned timetable for major initiatives - including plans to stop banks from using the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and the introduction of legislation to prepare the financial sector for the moment at the end of this year when the European Union's rules are no longer effective in the UK.

A publication about the grid released by the FCA and PRA today says that financial firms can "engage with it" and give the regulators their opinions about it. It adds that the grid will provide "expected timings" of measures that the regulators want to take. Elsewhere in the document, it says that the grid will contain detail about the timing of initiatives by quarter over a 12-month horizon – the forum wants to extend this to 24 months in future editions.

The grid has been published at https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/corporate/regulatory-intitiatives-grid.pdf. This is the first version of many. The Bank says that it "will run as an initial 12-month pilot," which implies that the regulators are not sure whether it will work well enough to survive, and will be published at least twice a year.

Keith Richards, the chief executive of the Personal Finance Society, has welcomed the news. He told Compliance Matters: "Issues like Covid-19 and Brexit apply across all forms of regulation, and it is vital that regulators have a co-ordinated approach.

“To date, the financial services regulators have shown a flexible approach, temporarily relaxing some reporting requirements in order to help the personal finance profession better serve their clients. This flexibility is welcome and the creation of the grid should help financial advice firms plan for the future.”

“Regulators do, however, need to play a wider role in building public confidence and trust in the sectors they regulate through a pro-active awareness and education strategy which would ultimately lead to better consumer empowerment, rather than the answer seeming to always be more regulation for the sector.”

In response to the depredations of the Coronavirus, the BoE has also cancelled some consultative exercises and told banks not to bother with the annual stress test.