The FCA has confirmed that, “on 30 April 2025, Wellesley & Co Limited (WCL) entered administration with Damian Webb, Stephanie Sutton and Jack Plunkett of RSM UK Restructuring Advisory LLP appointed as joint administrators.”
In September 2020, the FCA put restrictions on WCL, which promoted and arranged investments in property developments to the UK retail market, stopping its operations. Those restrictions will remain in place whilst the firm is in administration, the FCA has said.
Also last week, the FCA said the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) was accepting claims against Campbell & Associates Independent Financial Advice Ltd (Campbell & Associates).
The FCA has charged Lisa Campbell, the sole director of the company, “with multiple criminal offences, including fraud by abuse of position and providing false or misleading information to the FCA to conceal her wrongdoing.”
And in a separate enforcement action, the FCA announced it had “placed restrictions on Direct Trading Technologies (DTT), preventing it from carrying on any regulated activities and restricting access to its assets.”
“We identified that DTT is failing, or is likely to fail, to meet the standards required of an authorized firm,” the regular said in a brief press release.
Regulation
In an important development around digital assets regulation in the UK, the FCA announced last week it was “seeking views on the future regulation of specific crypto asset activities, ahead of legislation to bring them within regulation.”
A discussion paper circulated by the FCA has asked for feedback and views on intermediaries, staking, lending and borrowing, and decentralised finance.
David Geale, executive director of payments and digital finance at the FCA, said: “Crypto is a growing industry. Currently largely unregulated, we want to create a crypto regime that gives firms the clarity they need to safely innovate, while delivering appropriate levels of market integrity and consumer protection. Our aim is to drive sustainable, long-term growth of crypto in the UK. We’re asking whether we have got the balance right.”
You can read a more detailed article on the announcement elsewhere on GRIP.
Separately, the FCA has put out new proposals to streamline the rules on the types of funds investment firms must hold to absorb losses and maintain financial resilience during periods of stress.
“The proposals do not change the rules about how much capital firms must hold but focus on simplifying and consolidating the existing rules about what qualifies as regulatory capital,” the regulator said in a press release.
Because the current regulatory capital rules were made for banks, they don’t suit other different firms and, for that reason, the FCA wants to remove some and simplify others.
According to the press release: “These changes would reduce the volume of legal text by 70%.”
And in another similar step, the FCA announced last week it was “making it easier for firms to find up-to-date supervisory communications on our website.”
“From 30 April 2025, we’ll stop issuing and publishing portfolio letters. Instead, we’ll publish a small number of market reports. The market reports will include communications relevant to different types of firms and insights from our supervisory work.”
Historical portfolio letters and Dear CEO letters will also be retired to make it easier for firms to find up-to-date supervisory communications on the regulator’s website.
Media
Colin Payne, Head of innovation services at the FCA, wrote a blog reflecting on the lessons leant from the FCA’s two-day AI Sprint which was held in January this year.
Payne discussed the FCA’s engagement with advanced technologies such as AI, and how the UK’s existing regulatory framework can adopt and embrace technological innovations in the financial sector.
He also reflected upon the three lessons the regulator learnt after engaging with and listening to around 115 AI experts during the event. These include:
- Trust is important when it comes to the industry as well as consumers embracing AI. The FCA and firms can work together to build trust in AI and help the technology flourish.
- Embracing AI in the financial sector doesn’t necessarily mean new or more regulation. It’s about using the existing frameworks around introducing the technology.
- Future challenges around AI are more about impersonation risk, and the sustainability of data centres.
The Treasury and the FCA announced the appointments of Julia Black, Anita Kimber, John Ball and Stéphane Malrait to the FCA Board.
There was also an extension to Richard Lloyd’s second term as a non-executive director on the FCA Board.
In another announcement last week, the FCA said it was “seeking views from firms about how its live AI-testing service can help them to deploy safe and responsible AI.”
“The live testing service would be a new component of the FCA’s AI Lab, which has been supporting firms with the development and deployment of AI and would help to fill a testing gap slowing firms’ adoption of AI,” a press release read.
Speeches
Jessica Rusu, FCA Chief Data, Information and Intelligence Officer, delivered a speech at TheCityUK International Conference 2025, discussing global responses to digital assets regulation.
Key highlights included:
- “In uncertain conditions, the UK is a steady and trusted financial centre – offering the clarity, stability and proportionate regulation that firms need to start up and scale up with confidence.
- “The FCA is supporting growth and innovation through smarter systems, reduced regulatory burdens and a dynamic approach to supervision and authorization.
- “The FCA is helping shape the future of financial services – supporting firms to innovate through game-changing tools such as Sandboxes and an AI Lab, while working closely with Government and industry to realise the benefits of open finance.”
In a separate speech at the Innovate Finance Global Summit (IFGS) 2025., Rusu discussed how AI could help in achieving economic growth, and how the FCA could help firms.
Highlights included:
- “Under our new strategy, we’ve committed to being increasingly tech positive to support growth.
- “In the UK we excel at financial services, but we are not standing still and introducing reforms which will attract business here.
- “We know international firms have different needs and have put in place support for those firms.
- We’re launching AI Live Testing to allow firms to collaborate with the FCA while they check that their new AI tools are ready to be used.”
And Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight, delivered a speech at the Market Abuse and Market Manipulation Summit.
Highlights included:
- The “three Ps” approach – being predictable, proportionate, and purposeful – underpins our strategy to combat market abuse.
- Transaction reporting requirements are being streamlined to reduce burdens on firms.
- OCGs represent the most serious threat to our markets, and the FCA is prioritizing efforts to disrupt their operations.
- Collaboration is crucial – partnership is needed to complete the market integrity “jigsaw”.
We have also published a separate article summarizing the main points of the speech.