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Hi there,
The UK heated up this week in more ways than one, and I don't mean the weather. I was at an event on Saturday but couldn't shake the regulatory stories building in the background. The pace of change right now is faster than most firms are clocking. This week I've got two stories that you wouldn't normally put in the same sentence: accountability and tokenisation. By the end of this edition, you'll understand why they belong together. If someone forwarded this to you and you're not yet subscribed, hit the subscribe button now. You don't want to be catching up on this one.
Let's get into it.
Parliament filed the Consumer Credit Bill. The FCA will write the rules. And AI is already making the decisions nobody is accountable for.
UK financial services leaders are operating in a regulatory environment that is being rewritten faster than most firms are noticing. The FCA, that's the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK's main financial regulator, is not just issuing new rules. It is taking rules that used to live in statute, Parliament's law, and moving them onto its own rulebook. That matters because Parliament's laws are specific. FCA rules, especially when underpinned by the Consumer Duty, are not. Consumer Duty is the FCA's principle-led framework that holds named senior managers personally accountable for delivering good customer outcomes, not just following a process checklist. Meanwhile, in the same week, the FCA and the Bank of England published a shared vision for tokenising wholesale markets, a framework for turning real assets like bonds and shares into digital tokens on distributed ledgers. Both stories have the same gap at their centre: who inside your firm is accountable when the AI makes the call?
What's moving this week
The Consumer Credit Act Is Dead. The FCA Will Write What Comes Next.
On 18 May 2026, HM Treasury published its policy statement confirming the reform of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, a law that has governed lending, credit cards, and personal finance in the UK for 52 years. The following day, Parliament introduced the Financial Services and Markets Bill to implement the changes. The reform removes prescriptive statutory requirements from the CCA and delegates them to the FCA to replace with its own rules and guidance. The FCA confirmed it will consult, but has not set a timetable. The approach will be underpinned by the Consumer Duty.
Every consumer credit firm in the UK is affected. That includes banks, specialist lenders, car finance providers, buy-now-pay-later firms, and credit card issuers. The shift from prescriptive statute to principles-based FCA rules is significant. Under the old CCA, firms could point to compliance with a specific section of legislation. Under the new framework, they will need to demonstrate outcomes for consumers, and named senior managers will carry the accountability if those outcomes fall short.