Financial services back-to-school report 2026
Taking stock of UK and EU financial services regulatory developments over the summer
The summer edit: supporting innovation, targeted simplification and managing risk
As the summer draws to a close, policymakers and regulators across the UK and EU have continued to advance major reforms across financial services.
Across several areas, policymakers moved beyond setting out the direction of travel towards finalising requirements, enforcing expectations and providing greater clarity on what comes next. Notably, digital assets and artificial intelligence (AI) featured prominently in the summer agenda – including the finalisation of the FCA's cryptoasset and stablecoin regime, a vision for scaling tokenised capital markets beyond pilots and into live activity in the UK, and a focused assessment of the conditions needed to support wider adoption of AI across UK financial services. A second key theme was growth and competitiveness, reflected primarily through continued efforts to simplify regulatory requirements. At the same time, a more challenging risk environment is driving heightened supervisory scrutiny of firms' operational resilience, cyber resilience and preparedness for emerging threats.
Yet despite the progress over the summer, some of the most significant reforms are multi-year programmes, with important policy choices, rulemaking and implementation work still outstanding in both the UK and EU.
Our back-to-school report takes stock of the key themes emerging from July and August’s regulatory developments, and how senior executives can anticipate and respond to them effectively.
Our analysis covers four cross-cutting themes:
- Artificial Intelligence (including the UK AI adoption plan for financial services and the Mills Review)
- Digital assets and payments (including the final FCA crypto and stablecoin regime and the Wholesale Digital Markets Champion’s report)
- Consumer protection (including Consumer Duty simplification)
- Risk landscape (including the ECB’s geopolitical risk stress test)
We also provide sector-specific perspectives on key developments across:
- Investment funds (including reforms to the alternative investment fund managers regime)
- Pensions (including the workplace pensions roadmap)
- Bank prudential (including UK and EU bank capital reforms)
- Capital markets (including UK and EU transaction reporting reforms)
Download the back-to-school report to explore these themes in more detail.
Register for our upcoming webinars
To mark the launch of the report, we are hosting two webinars exploring the key regulatory developments of the summer and their implications for firms.
1. UK & EU view (17 September): Join a panel of Deloitte experts for a strategic assessment of the most significant regulatory developments over summer, across the UK and EU and their implications for firms.
Register for the UK & EU webinar
2. European & US view (22 September): A cross-border perspective on the key regulatory themes shaping financial services in the UK, EU and US, exploring areas of convergence and divergence, and the implications for firms active across these markets. Speakers will include the US and European heads of the Deloitte Centre for Regulatory Strategy.
Register for the European & US webinar
Timeline tool update
The EMEA Centre for Regulatory Strategy has also published an updated version of its regulatory timeline tool. The tool lists a selection of current and upcoming financial services regulatory initiatives across different industry sectors and topics.
