The announcement forms part of the FRC’s broader move to a more integrated, end-to-end regulatory approach, aligning supervisory, investigatory and enforcement activity more closely to identify risks earlier, act more quickly, and support continuous improvement across the market.

These reforms are based on a clear principle: enforcement serves the public interest. This requires a modern framework that supports system-wide improvements and learning while also taking a robust response to serious or significant failures. Investigations therefore remain an important part of this toolkit to maintain public trust in the FRC’s regulatory activity.

These reforms include a new and expanded range of routes to resolution, enabling the FRC to respond to cases in a targeted and timely way:

• Published Constructive Engagement (PCE), combining remediation with public transparency to support improvement and learning for the whole audit market
• Accelerated Procedure (AP), enabling faster resolution where sufficient evidence is already available
• Early Admissions Process (EAP), which encourages firms to cooperate with the FRC earlier in admitting and identifying breaches of relevant requirements.

The updated framework moves beyond a binary model of investigations or private constructive engagement to introduce a graduated range of responses. This gives the FRC more flexibility to act quickly and in a more targeted way when serious issues arise. Cases will be handled consistently based on their impact, while maintaining the ability to pursue full and robust investigation and enforcement action where appropriate.

Richard Moriarty, CEO, said: “Good regulation supports well-functioning markets by giving confidence that high standards are upheld and action is taken when they are not met.

“The FRC’s toolkit retains the use of investigations to maintain accountability and public trust where serious or significant failures have occurred. This revised framework now provides us with additional options which are more proportionate, timely and targeted, which will support us to resolve issues more quickly and support system-wide learning.”