LONDON — Britain will not scrap the system introduced after the 2008 financial crisis to make senior bankers accountable for risky decisions, financial services minister Andrew Griffith said on Tuesday.
The so-called senior managers and certification regime (SM&CR) was introduced after few individual bankers were punished after taxpayers had to bail out lenders more than a decade ago.
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“The core underlying principles remain the same,” Griffith told parliament’s Treasury Select Committee, adding the there will be changes to the regime to avoid “scope creep.”
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Griffith said there would be a “call for evidence” to see if the scope of the SM&CR could be narrowed and result in faster vetting of senior banker appointments by regulators.
There are also no plans to “dismantle or dismember” rules that force banks to “ring-fence” their retail operations with a bespoke cushion of capital, he said.
However, a proposed raising of the threshold that triggers compliance with the rules would reflect how other rules to wind up failing banks smoothly without taxpayer aid have now been introduced, Griffith said.
Last month the UK finance ministry set out proposed reforms to bolster the City of London’s role as a global financial center as it faces added competition from European Union centers such as Amsterdam and Frankfurt since Britain’s departure from the bloc.
Delivering a significant number of the proposed reforms by the end of 2023 would be at the top of Griffith’s list, he said. (Reporting by Huw Jones Editing by Alison Williams and David Goodman )
