FCA survey shows rising trust but reporting burden persists

The Financial Conduct Authority's regulated firms are, by their own account, more satisfied with it than they were a year ago. In the 2026 joint survey run with the FCA Practitioner Panel, 79% of full-permission firms gave the regulator a high score for satisfaction with their relationship, up from 74% in 2025. Effectiveness ratings rose to 76% from 69%, and 75% reported high trust in the FCA. Confidence in all four of its statutory objectives improved too.

That is good news for an industry that has spent several years absorbing Consumer Duty implementation, a reshaped growth mandate and a steady flow of data requests. But the same survey shows firms still divided on whether reporting demands have eased, whether the FCA understands innovation, and whether its newer growth objective is being delivered rather than just better explained. For UK fintechs navigating authorisation, reporting and Consumer Duty obligations, the headline numbers are encouraging context rather than evidence that the practical friction has gone.

The survey matters now because it is the clearest annual read the industry gets on how its principal regulator is perceived, at a point when the FCA is early in its 2025–2030 strategy, which explicitly includes growth and competitiveness alongside its older consumer and market objectives.

What the survey measured

The FCA and the Practitioner Panel, a statutory industry body that provides independent practitioner input and challenge to the regulator rather than acting as a consumer body or separate regulator, commissioned the research firm Verian to run the survey. Fieldwork took place online between January and April 2026. All eligible firms were invited for the second year running, but the headline key-findings report concentrates on 4,064 full-permission firms; limited-permission results sit in separate detailed material.

The 2026 methodology changed substantially. Previous surveys split firms by consumer-credit and non-consumer-credit status; this year's moved to full-permission and limited-permission populations with new firm-size and sector classifications. The report is explicit that only reviewed, re-analysed comparisons between 2025 and 2026 are shown, because not every historic figure is directly comparable. That matters for anyone tempted to read a straight trend line across more than two years.

It is also worth being precise about what the survey can and cannot show. It measures firms' perceptions of satisfaction, trust and effectiveness. It does not independently verify whether supervision became more effective, or cheaper, in any measurable sense.

Confidence rose most in the FCA's core role

The clearest gains sit in the regulator's longest-standing responsibilities. Confidence that the FCA is delivering on its statutory objectives reached 87% for consumer protection, 85% for well-functioning markets, 85% for market and financial-system integrity, and 72% for effective competition in 2026 — all improvements the report describes as statistically significant. Separately, 71% of firms agreed that FCA work enhanced the UK's reputation as a financial centre, up from 67%.

*The FCA's detailed report describes this as an eight-percentage-point rise; the seven-point gap shown here reflects rounding of the underlying unrounded figures. †Statistically in line with 2025 — the increase is not a significant change.

The growth-objective headline needs unpacking

The most eye-catching number in the FCA's own news release was a 27-percentage-point jump in understanding of its secondary international competitiveness and growth objective, alongside a 25-point rise in confidence that the FCA is delivering it. That objective was created by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, which received Royal Assent on 29 June 2023, and requires the FCA, so far as reasonably possible, to advance competitiveness and medium-to-long-term growth when exercising its general functions — without displacing its consumer protection, integrity, market-functioning or competition duties.

The 27-point and 25-point figures, however, apply only to "fixed firms" — the largest, most significant firms under dedicated FCA supervision — not to the full-permission population the rest of the survey describes, and the 2025 comparison point covers only non-consumer-credit fixed firms, since not every fixed firm was asked the question that year. Among fixed firms, understanding reached 76% and delivery confidence reached 50%, a sharp rise from a low base, but 46% of fixed firms remained unconfident in delivery even after the improvement.

Set against the full-permission population as a whole, only 46% said they understood the growth objective well and 54% were confident the FCA was delivering it. The FCA's own release presented the fixed-firm increases without flagging that they do not represent the wider regulated population, which risks overstating how broadly the growth message has landed.

Innovation support remains the weak spot for fintech

Firms remained markedly less positive about the FCA's handling of growth and innovation than about its traditional objectives. Only 38% said the FCA effectively supports digital markets and new technologies, and the same 38% said it adapts regulatory requirements efficiently to innovation and new challenges. Awareness of the FCA's innovation services stood at 54%, but actual use was rare: just 3% of all full-permission firms had used one directly, equivalent to 6% of those who knew the services existed. The survey found awareness correlated with more favourable views of the FCA, though it cannot establish that awareness caused those views.

Reporting reform has not removed the burden

Reporting remains the clearest point of friction. In 2026, 33% of full-permission firms said the FCA made more information requests than appeared necessary — statistically unchanged from 31% in 2025 — while 38% said the volume was about right, up from 33%. Firms were split almost evenly on the practical difficulty of complying: 33% agreed FCA data requests were often difficult to collate, and 31% disagreed. Among firms that considered requests excessive and answered a follow-up question, about half named the quarterly Financial Resilience Report, FIN073, as the specific source of frustration.

The FCA says it is removing outdated or duplicated returns for 90% of firms and estimates that reporting changes save firms roughly £16m a year. Those are FCA administrative estimates, not figures measured by respondents, and the survey's own burden findings show many firms have not yet felt a corresponding reduction in what is asked of them. Only 24% agreed that Handbook simplification had helped cut their firm's costs, and 35% agreed it was improving market and consumer outcomes. On proportionality more broadly, 45% agreed FCA costs were proportionate to the benefits delivered, up from 40% in 2025, but 25% still disagreed — and fixed firms were notably more critical, with just 33% agreeing against 36% disagreeing.

Consumer Duty is better understood, not necessarily easier

Self-reported understanding of Consumer Duty expectations is high: 88% of full-permission firms said they understood what the FCA expects on supporting consumers and embedding the Duty, which took effect for open products and services on 31 July 2023 and for closed products and services on 31 July 2024. Sector results ranged from 73% among wholesale buy-side firms to 92% among consumer investment and pension firms.

That figure describes clarity of expectation, not demonstrated compliance quality or cost. The survey does not quantify what firms spend on Consumer Duty compliance, remediation or governance, so a high understanding score cannot be read as evidence that embedding the Duty has become cheaper or less demanding for fintechs that must still produce evidence of consumer outcomes.

Authorisation: broadly positive, with one in five unhappy on timing

Among firms that had been through FCA authorisation in the preceding 12 months, 74% agreed requirements were clear, 70% found the FCA helpful, 66% found the process straightforward, and 66% considered the time taken reasonable. Timing drew the sharpest criticism: 20% disagreed that it was reasonable, and 5% were dissatisfied across all four aspects tested.

Aggregate FCA metrics show 97.6% of solo-regulated applications across all metric areas met applicable deadlines in 2025/26 once newer voluntary targets were included, and 99.2% met existing statutory deadlines. That headline can mask weaker category-level performance: separate FCA operating metrics record 93.5% on-time performance for payment-service firm authorisations, a figure based on 31 cases. The FCA began working voluntarily towards faster targets from 15 July 2025 — four months for complete new-firm and variation-of-permission applications and 10 months for incomplete ones — ahead of proposed statutory change, while the existing six- and 12-month statutory deadlines remained in force pending any legislative change.

What this means for UK fintechs

None of this changes the obligations a fintech must meet. Reporting architecture and the ability to produce reusable, well-organised data remain an operational priority regardless of improved sentiment, given that a third of firms still consider FCA requests excessive, with FIN073 cited by about half of the follow-up respondents who already held that view. Consumer Duty evidence and governance cannot be relaxed on the strength of an 88% understanding score, because that figure says nothing about whether a firm's own evidence base would satisfy supervisors. Submitting complete, well-prepared authorisation applications and engaging with the FCA ahead of formal submission remain relevant, since timing complaints and category-level metrics suggest some application types still move more slowly than the aggregate figures imply. And growth-objective rhetoric, however welcome to firms building new products, has not yet translated into broad confidence: even among the fixed firms where understanding rose sharply, 46% remain unconvinced the objective is actually being delivered.

What to watch next

The FCA's news release does not provide the detail needed to verify how its 90%-of-firms return removal and £16m savings estimate break down by firm size or sector, or to reconcile them with the survey's unchanged burden perceptions. Further Handbook or reporting simplification, the next set of SICGO metrics, category-level authorisation performance for payment and e-money firms, and the Practitioner Panel's ongoing challenge on proportionality and Consumer Duty interpretation are the areas most likely to show whether 2026's improved sentiment becomes a measurable change in firms' day-to-day experience. Firms wanting the underlying data should consult the FCA's published survey report and its authorisation and SICGO metrics directly, rather than relying on summary figures alone.