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About Practical Law Financial Services
Practical Law UK Help and Information Notes 6-201-4224 (Approx. 6 pages)
About Practical Law Financial Services
| Maintained • United Kingdom |
Information about the Practical Law Financial Services service, including details about coverage, resources, and current awareness.
To find out more, ask a question online or call us on +44 (0)345 600 9355.
Practical Law Financial Services provides up-to-date and practical guidance on UK financial services law and regulation. The practice area also covers key international developments that are likely to have an impact in the UK, as well as EU financial services developments. It is an invaluable resource for financial services lawyers and practitioners, compliance officers, regulators and anyone with an interest in financial services regulation.
Our team of financial services specialists creates and maintains all our resources.
Our resources are supplemented with materials written with financial services experts at leading firms, which are then kept up to date by our team. We are also able to draw on our consultation board, which consists of a prestigious group of financial services experts.
Coverage
All sectors of the financial services industry are covered by Practical Law Financial Services. This means it is relevant to, among others, banks, building societies, wholesale investment firms, insurers, asset managers, financial advisers, payment services institutions, e-money institutions, mortgage brokers and home finance institutions, mutual societies and consumer credit providers.
Areas that the practice area covers include:
- The UK financial services regulatory structure.
- International legislative and regulatory reforms that have an impact in the UK.
- EU legislative and regulatory developments.
- The regulatory perimeter, including potential extensions to the perimeter.
- How financial institutions become (and stay) authorised.
- The conduct of business rules financial institutions must adhere to.
- Client asset and client money rules.
- Prudential rules that apply to financial institutions.
- Financial promotion and marketing restrictions.
- The regulation of different financial products and markets.
- Investigations and enforcement by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), and the Bank of England (BoE).
- The Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SM&CR) and training and competence rules for those working in financial institutions.
- FinTech and the regulation of cryptoassets.
- Sustainable finance and ESG developments affecting financial institutions.
- Financial and corporate crime, including money laundering, market abuse, insider dealing, and sanctions.
Practical Law Financial Services subscribers also have access to Practical Law Corporate's materials on the Listing, Prospectus and Disclosure and Transparency Rules.
Resources
Like all Practical Law practice areas, we provide:
- Legal updates alerting you to developments in law, regulation and practice, as they happen. You can receive these by email and RSS or view them online. See Financial services: legal updates.
- Practice notes with clear, concise and up-to-date explanations of financial services law, regulation and practice, enabling you to advise with confidence. See Financial services: practice notes.
- Checklists providing quick reference reminders of the law as it applies in practice. See Financial services: checklists.
We also provide:
- Hot topic practice notes tracking the progress of key reforms and developments affecting the financial services sector. Each hot topic note quickly gets to the heart of the matter, pinpoints its current status, contains a timeline of anticipated developments and sets out links to key primary sources. See Financial services hot topics: resources overview.
- Key dates for financial services professionals, outlining anticipated key dates for significant legal and regulatory developments that are likely to have an impact on the UK financial services industry. See Horizon scanning for financial services practitioners.
- Key dates calendar. A fully searchable calendar identifying the upcoming dates practitioners need to be aware of. See Key dates: Financial Services.
- Trackers, providing quick access to financial services cases, decisions, legislation, parliamentary inquiries, publications and other key current regulatory developments. See Financial services trackers.
- Case reports, covering key cases of relevance to the financial services sector. See Practice note, Financial services case trackers.
- Articles from PLC Magazine, the leading monthly magazine for business lawyers, and from leading law firms specialising in financial services. See the Articles archive and the latest edition of PLC Magazine.
- Comment columns from leading financial services lawyers on topical developments in financial services:
- Global guides on financial services law and regulation around the world, featuring country Q&As and cross-border analysis articles:
- Resources for new joiners. We offer key resources for trainees joining financial services departments and for newly qualified financial services lawyers. See Trainees and new joiners: key resources on Practical Law Financial Services.
- Ask service. Our team can help you find resources, expand on what we have written and act as a sounding board on a tricky legal point.
Current awareness
Our team of experts monitors and reviews thousands of sources daily to identify and analyse developments that are of practical significance to financial services practitioners.
Our legal updates include:
- Background information where relevant.
- A summary of the development.
- Links to external source materials, and other updates and practice notes (where appropriate).
Our legal updates cover, among other things:
- Proposed, draft and new UK, EU and international legislation and regulation.
- Consultation papers, policy statements, speeches and guidance from the UK government, EU authorities, UK and EU regulators, international standard-setters and other relevant bodies.
- Key cases, enforcement actions and tribunal decisions.
- Changes in market practice.
Choose to receive our financial services legal updates at a time and a frequency that suits you: daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly.
Daily alerts
Daily alert emails are sent after 12pm and 4pm each day. These identify key developments that we intend to cover in our daily email, list other developments that we consider to be of interest and include links to relevant source materials.
To sign up to receive the 12pm and 4pm alerts, visit Email preferences.
How to access current awareness
We publish current awareness email alerts covering all the latest developments, which you can sign up for by clicking on the "Alerts" link at the top right-hand corner of any page on the Practical Law website and selecting "Create Alert".
The customisation features allow you to combine legal updates from across different practice areas and select just the topics you need. You can also set your preferred timing, frequency and level of detail for alerts. For more information and guidance on how to use the alert centre, see Quick reference guide, How to set up alerts reference guide, How to set up alerts.
You can also:
- View the most recent updates.
- Search for past legal updates from any page of the website.
- Sign up to receive updates by RSS as they are published.
- Follow us on Twitter: @PracticalLawUK using the hashtag #FinServ.