Our innovation services

The Regulatory Sandbox allows firms to test their business models in the live market with real consumers. We welcome applications from innovative firms, both incumbents and new entrants, who are trying to do something different in financial services. These could be authorised firms, unauthorised firms that need authorisation, or technology firms that may not need authorisation but instead want to support the UK financial services market.

The Regulatory Sandbox looks to provide firms with:

• the ability to test products and services in a controlled environment
• an understanding of how a particular technology works in the market
• support in identifying consumer protection safeguards to build into new products and services
• an opportunity to find out whether a business model is attractive to consumers
• reduced time-to market at potentially lower cost

The Regulatory Sandbox provides a dedicated FCA case manager to help with your test.

You can apply for the Regulatory Sandbox at any time, but you must meet our eligibility criteria to be accepted. Find out how to apply[3].

Innovation Pathways helps innovative firms to understand our regulation and navigate our regulatory regime. We can help both new and established businesses, and can support firms doing regulated or unregulated business.

Our support may include:

• how a business model fits within the regulatory framework
• how our rules work with a product or service that didn’t exist when the rules were drafted
• how our rules apply to automated models delivering advice and guidance to consumer
• whether or not a new business model requires authorisation and, if so, what type of authorisation
• how to go about applying for authorisation or a variation in existing permissions

Innovation Pathways provides a dedicated FCA case manager to help you understand our regulatory regime. When an Innovation Pathways firm applies for authorisation, they will benefit from faster allocation of a case officer and post-authorisation support in the form of a named supervisory contact.

You can apply for Innovation Pathways support at any time, but you must meet our eligibility criteria[4] before being accepted. Find out how to apply[5].

The Digital Sandbox provides innovators with access to high-quality data assets to test and develop their propositions and data providers with marketplaces to generate interest to their products. It was launched to support products and services at earlier stages of development, namely ‘proofs of concept’ (POC).

It also provides a focused ecosystem to accelerate early-stage development, through access to a range of industry mentors and demonstration opportunities.

The Digital Sandbox is permanently open for applications from 1 August 2023. Find out more about the Digital Sandbox and how to apply[6].

TechSprints, also known as ‘hackathons’, are events that allow us to gather participants from across the financial services industry and beyond to develop technology-based ideas and discuss specific industry challenges.

Participants include large financial services institutions, RegTechs, FinTechs, academics, cross-sector regulators, technologists and innovators.

TechSprints help the acceleration and development of new solutions through collaboration, resulting in new partnerships and pilots. For example, our machine readable and executable regulation TechSprint led to a pilot between us, the Bank of England and 7 banks that developed the Digital Regulatory Reporting (DRR) work programme.

You can find full details, including upcoming events, on our TechSprint page[7].

We continue to explore ways to enhance our approach to regulation, to allow innovative firms of all sizes to scale and grow for the benefit of markets, firms and consumers.

We organise industry engagement events, such as roundtables and workshops, to help develop thinking on priority fintech areas and the ways in which practical and productive collaboration can take place at scale.

We are also invited to events hosted by other organisations that support innovation in financial services, including workshops, roadshows, roundtables, conferences and panel sessions.

If you would like to invite us to speak at your event, please fill in our speaker request form[8]. Please make sure you mention the innovation team on the form.