UKGI is ‘a long way off having regulation as an enabler’ for growth – Biba’s David Sparkes

Despite the UK government’s ambition to leverage the financial services sector as one of eight key industries primed to facilitate national economic growth, the current regulatory landscape provided by the FCA is still “a long way off” being an “enabler” of desired growth, according to David Sparkes, regulation director at broking trade body Biba.

Sparkes addressed around 140 attendees at London hotel The Ned on 20 November 2025, speaking at a lunch event hosted by financial technology firm Ncino, to celebrate its October 2025 rebranding from previous moniker FullCircl.

US-headquartered Ncino bought FullCircl in October 2024. The rebrand project was therefore designed to align FullCircl with its new parent firm’s identity.

As part of the rebrand celebration, director of insurance industry growth at Ncino Ashleigh Gwilliam chaired a panel discussion featuring Sparkes, co-founder and co-chair at the Insurance Cultural Awareness Network Ajay Mistry and Gillian Brennan, senior broker proposition manager at Aviva.

During the conversation, Sparkes commented that although recent activity from the FCA has been “a positive step” in terms of supporting the government’s national growth agenda – with Sparkes jokingly revealing that Biba chief executive Graeme Trudgill described the FCA’s May 2025 deregulation consultation paper CP 25/12 as “an early Christmas present” – the UK general insurance market is still “a long way off having regulation as an enabler”.

However, Sparkes did confirm that the FCA has been stepping up to better support brokers and that the regulation lever for greater economic growth was by no means stuck in a stalemate.

He said: “What I will give the FCA credit for is [it is] now starting to listen to brokers and certainly for the last two years, the FCA’s head of insurance supervision [Lisa Sturley] has joined Biba on our tour [of] the regions and heard directly from brokers about what some of the challenges are, where the pinch points of regulations are. That culminated in the paper [the FCA] put out called CP 25/12: Simplifying the insurance rules.

“There’s a lot more that needs to happen to make regulation an enabler of growth. But we have started that journey.”

‘Technology neutral’

Many market participants have turned to artificial intelligence (AI) and technological tools to help drive business growth, seeking to reduce operational costs and unlock time efficiencies for staff.

Sparkes said this is something the FCA is cognisant of and is certainly considering more as part of its oversight.

He explained: “One thing you’ll hear the FCA saying on a regular basis is that [its] rule book is medium neutral or technology neutral. The idea is that customers should get the same good outcome no matter what journey they went [on] to get to that outcome and no matter who else is involved with it.

“One of the things the FCA has been specifically clear about, from a governance perspective, is the governance and oversight of AI. Can a member of the board articulate what the algorithm does to ensure that they gain comfort for themselves [as a business]? That the algorithm doesn’t produce a poor customer outcome? It shouldn’t be the case of you let AI do all the work and you don’t understand what it is that comes out at the end of it.

“As one of our more colourful members likes to say to me about AI, it’s definitely artificial, but it’s not intelligent, so you still need personal oversight.”