Biba Manifesto 2026: Trade body seeks new Financial Services Bill

Biba has renewed its call for a new Financial Services Bill as part of a wide-ranging push to reduce regulatory friction across the UK general insurance market.

Speaking at a manifesto pre-launch press briefing with Insurance Times ahead of the publication of Biba’s 2026 manifesto yesterday (14 January 2026), senior figures warned that regulatory costs, duplication and gold-plating risked undermining broker sustainability, competition and customer outcomes if reforms were not delivered through primary legislation.

Biba chief executive Graeme Trudgill said the association was pressing HM Treasury to introduce a new Financial Services Bill early in the next parliamentary session to act as a legislative vehicle for reforms already trailed by government and regulators.

“Number one, introduce a new Financial Services Bill,” Trudgill said. “Obviously, I’m really pleased that the Treasury cost cutting reforms are looking to make improvements on the senior managers and certification regime, on the ombudsman, on authorisations.

”But we do need a legislative vehicle to do that. Hence, we’re asking for a Financial Services Bill.”

Trudgill acknowledged that the request faced political headwinds but said it was unavoidable if progress was to be made.

“It’s not easy asking for a bill that isn’t in the King’s speech, that’s quite a challenge, but we just think it’s a necessity if we’re going to actually make these changes happen,” he said.

Biba’s regulation director David Sparkes added that repeated references to reform happening “when parliamentary time allows” risked becoming meaningless without a concrete timetable.

“The government did say, when parliamentary time allows, and you see that in a number of things that they’ve said those terms, when parliamentary time allows,” he said.

“Parliamentary time won’t allow it unless you introduce it. So, the simple ask is, can we bring it forward? Can you actually introduce the Financial Services Bill?”

FOS review

Alongside legislative reform, Biba has called for a review of the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) remit and operation, arguing that it has drifted away from its intended role as a simple dispute resolution service.

“One of the things I think is important to remember when you look at how the government actually labelled the stuff we’re going to do with the Ombudsman, is bring the Ombudsman back to a simple focus on getting the claims in a fair way,” Sparkes said.

“And importantly, interpret the FCA rules as the FCA wanted them interpreted, not make their own mind up about what they meant.”

Trudgill also described a review of the Ombudsman as a long-standing priority for Biba members. 

Disproportionate regulation

The association positioned these reforms within a broader concern that regulation had become disproportionate over time, particularly for brokers that do not carry underwriting risk.

“We’ve been saying this in manifestos for many years that the regulation had gone too far,” Trudgill said. “They call it the sauce on glaze, because we have absolutely put so much more sauce on our regulation than anyone else and we don’t need all that sauce.”

Biba warned that regulatory friction was already feeding through into market structure, with authorised broker numbers continuing to fall. Trudgill said there were only two applications to the FCA for directly authorised brokers in the first quarter of the year, which he described as “really low”.

“It’s important to us that there’s brokers in every town and city providing clients with solutions across the country,” he said.

A central theme of the manifesto was simplifying FCA rules, reporting requirements and Consumer Duty scope, areas Trudgill said Biba had “hung our coat on” during engagement with the regulator.

“The big FCA points, faster authorisations, reducing the scope of the Consumer Duty, streamlining reporting and the product value assessments and fair value assessment work. Well, we’ve nailed all of those,” he said.

Commercial clients

Meanwhile, Trudgill argued that capturing large commercial clients within Consumer Duty had added unnecessary cost without improving protection.

“Why is it capturing large commercial clients? They’re not consumers. Why are they in Consumer Duty? It’s so much more work and resource for the industry,” he said.

“So that scope has been reduced, and of course, it hasn’t affected any consumers.”

This mirrored a point that Georgina Fleet, chief compliance officer at Zurich UK, made to a House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee inquiry on 6 January 2026 that the Consumer Duty is being misapplied to commercial insurance lines.

Reporting requirements

Meanwhile, Sparkes said reporting requirements remained a persistent frustration, particularly for smaller firms.

“This is probably one of the things that regularly comes up from our members, is the amount of reporting that they have to do,” he said.

“One of our members last year mentioned they had 47 reports that they had to do to the FCA for different areas.”

He highlighted duplication across returns such as Retail Mediation Activity Returns, SMCR returns and complaints data, alongside ad hoc requests. “Quite often the small firms may mean having to actually go out and pay their accountant to buy it from, which is an extra cost to the industry,” Sparkes said.

While acknowledging progress, he said more could be done. “To be fair to the FCA, they have started the process, as Graeme mentioned, I think they’ve reduced about five areas of returns, but there’s always more that can be done,” he said.

Despite the criticism, Biba was keen to stress that its relationship with the FCA remained constructive. “Our relations with the FCA are really first class,” Trudgill said. “They came on every day of our regional tour. They’ve been here so many times meeting with members about reporting, about market reports, about all sorts of these points.”

The association concluded that progress had been made, but without a Financial Services Bill and further simplification, the opportunity to rebalance regulation in favour of growth and competition could be lost.