Fair4All Finance has responded to the FCA’s consultation on replacing the current ad-hoc collection of R2B2 data with a new annual regulatory return.

The consultation comes at an important moment for financial inclusion policy in the UK. The Government’s forthcoming Financial Inclusion Strategy has elevated financial inclusion as a national priority, while parliamentary scrutiny of progress across the financial services sector is increasing.

In this context, high-quality regulatory data has a key role to play in supporting transparency and accountability.

While the Financial Inclusion Strategy sets important system-wide ambitions, there is currently no authoritative, independent mechanism to assess how individual firms are contributing to those outcomes. 

In our view, the publication of product-level regulatory data and firm performance metrics could significantly strengthen this evidence base. It offers an opportunity to enhance transparency and support a more robust framework for assessing access, affordability, suitability and outcomes across retail banking – and potentially, over time other financial markets, like the insurance market.

We therefore see the proposals in the consultation as an important step toward strengthening outcome-focused accountability across the sector.