The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is to begin charging a £50 administration fee to firms that continue to require it to issue paper invoices instead of taking advantage of the regulator’s online invoicing portal. The FCA first proposed the new charge from April 2020 in Consultation paper 19/30 (CP19/30) saying that its introduction would cover the cost of the additional administration required to process paper invoices as well as be more economical, efficient and environmentally friendly. The regulator said at the time 8% of firms still chose to receive their FCA invoices on paper.
The FCA will be writing to affected firms shortly explaining the move and encouraging them to register online for its paperless service before 18th September 2020. This will ensure firms are not charged the new administration fee on their 2020/21 fee invoice.
Firms will receive a letter with instructions on how to self-register, which will include a unique validation code. The FCA said that registration should only take a few minutes to complete. Once registered, firms can either decide to use the full portal service or use the FCA’s application as an email service (the latter service means that every time the FCA raises an invoice the user will receive an email with a pdf of the document attached, without having to log-in to the app). Firms can choose to swap between the full portal service and the email service at any time without any additional costs.
BIBA members’ compliance and regulation queries should be directed to: [email protected].
