Regulations
By James Thorp
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Pilot Already Running With Six Dual-Regulated Firms. The FCA didn't just flip a switch on this. Before opening applications to solo-regulated firms,…
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How the Scale-Up Unit Fits the Bigger Picture. The Scale-up Unit doesn't exist in isolation. It's designed to slot into a broader ecosystem of…
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The FCA just opened something new. Starting May 20, 2026, solo-regulated financial firms in the UK can apply to join the regulator's freshly launched Scale-up Unit — a dedicated…
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The pitch is pretty straightforward. Fast-growing firms often hit a wall when regulatory complexity outpaces their internal capacity to deal with it.
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The FCA didn't just flip a switch on this. Before opening applications to solo-regulated firms, the regulator and the Prudential Regulation Authority ran a pilot with six…
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Six firms isn't a huge sample. But it's a start, and the FCA seems to want the feedback loop running before it scales the thing up.
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The application window for solo-regulated firms runs from May 20 to June 22, 2026. That's a tight window — barely five weeks. Firms that want in should probably move fast.
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The Scale-up Unit doesn't exist in isolation. It's designed to slot into a broader ecosystem of FCA support programs that already exist — Innovation Pathways, the Pre-Application…
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Related: FCA and Bank of England Push Tokenisation Into UK Wholesale Markets
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That's the ambition, anyway. Whether the integration actually works smoothly in practice is unclear yet.
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It's worth noting what the FCA is trying to protect here. The UK's position as a global financial hub isn't guaranteed.
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Rusu's framing matters here. She's the chief data, information, and intelligence officer, not the chief executive or a policy lead in the traditional sense.
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No details yet on how many firms the Scale-up Unit can handle at once, or what happens after the initial application window closes.
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Read also: SEC Rewrites Public Listing Rules and Crypto Firms Are Watching Closely
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And the pilot with the six dual-regulated firms is still running. The FCA says those insights will shape how policy and regulatory processes evolve.
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