A report by the regulator in March 2013 outlined proposals to make it quicker and more cost effective for new firms to apply for banking licences and for existing banks to expand.
A BBA review out this week confirmed 25 pre-application meetings with prospective mortgage lenders have been held by the FCA in the last 12 months with 23 progressing onward.
This reform has seen the number of banking licence applications leap from seven in March 2013 to 23 at the same point a year later.
The FCA’s annual report said it had also seen a take up of its new strategy to allow certain activities to be authorised more quickly, called the mobilisation phase.
“We have also seen considerable interest in the new mobilisation phase, which offers firms the option to be authorised at an earlier stage and with less effort, but with a restriction on the business that they can undertake,” it said.
“They can then ‘mobilise’ with the certainty of being authorised when raising capital, investing in IT systems and hiring staff. There are two recently authorised banks using this mobilisation process and one bank has successfully completed mobilisation and is now fully operational.”
