Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority launch scale-up unit to support financial service firms

The UK government recently announced the launch of a new scale-up unit, operating as a joint initiative between the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA). It will focus on banks, building societies and insurers before opening up to other firms in the sector, including fintechs in 2026. 

Purpose of the scale-up unit

The journey from start-up to scale-up can be exciting and daunting for firms operating in the financial services sector, not least in managing regulatory responsibilities and ensuring processes and control scale effectively as the business and customer base does.

The scale-up unit is created as a dedicated resource to help firms navigate these types of complexities, to support regulated firms to scale through offering guidance and practical support to manage the transition smoothly. This follows on the success of other recent initiatives such as the PRA’s new bank start up unit, established in 2016 and the FCA’s early and high growth oversight unit, for recently authorised firms, established in 2022. 

How will it operate?

The PRA and FCA has published some initial detail. View the PRA guidance here and the FCA guidance here.

The scale-up unit will offer a dedicated point of contact for firms and it aims to assist with a range of common place challenges:

• Regulatory processes: helping firms to understand which regulatory processes are relevant to them and how that interacts with growth plans, supporting more coordinated interaction with the regulators, particularly around expected regulatory submissions and updates the firm needs to manage (such as applications linked to activities and personnel or Suspected Unapproved Parts notifications).
• Product innovations: many firms are focused on developing new products and or delivering financial services in innovative ways, the scale-up unit aims to facilitate early-stage discussions with firms exploring new territories or challenging the status quo, providing insight on associated regulatory treatment.
• Impact of new policies: the UK regulatory perimeter is ever evolving with a variety of new policy proposals and frameworks on the horizon, the scale-up unit will seek feedback directly from scaling firms managing regulatory change and determine how to implement new policies and requirements, feeding this into future PRA and FCA policy-making processes and market reviews.
• Sector engagement: the scale-up unit also supports ongoing dialogue and fostering positive and stronger relationships between regulators, firms and industry, advisors and financial service professionals. All this supports greater understanding of market developments and trends and greater collaboration between regulator and regulated firms.
• Complementing existing support: the scale-up unit is designed to complement, not replace, existing support services the FCA and PRA offer to regulated firms, it is intended to work in tandem with existing teams, like supervision, enforcement, applications.

Who can access the scale-up unit?

Given the broadness of the UK’s regulatory perimeter and range of financial services that are overseen by the FCA and PRA, it’s clear that “scaling firms” could capture a very wide variety of businesses each with diverse and nuanced needs.

Initially the scale-up unit will focus on support to banks and building societies as well as insurers, through a joined up PRA and FCA approach. 

The FCA recognises these scale-up services should be offered to solo-regulated firms too and is currently exploring how best to support these types of scaling firms and set eligibility criteria. The FCA plans to share more detail in Spring 2026, although firms are welcome to share thoughts by emailing solo-regulatedscaleupunit@fca.org.uk.

Ashfords' comment

The UK’s financial services and fintech market is world leading and the scale at which some firms in the market continue to grow cannot be ignored. The scale-up unit is a great initiative proposed by government to support these regulated firms to manage the complexities of rapid expansion and launch of innovative products and services, whilst correctly navigating the regulatory perimeter and associated standards. It also aligns well with the FCA and PRA secondary objectives linked to international competitiveness and growth of the UK economy over the medium to long term.

Getting in touch

Ashfords is well experienced supporting early stage and scaling regulated firms on their growth journeys, through fundraising and investment, securing regulatory approvals, launch of new products and services, IP and brand protection and all other commercial needs. If you’d like to learn more please get in touch with Oliver Woodhouse and Isabel Rosen.