The Bank of England has announced a set of new plans aimed at making it easier for insurers to invest, as well as cutting reporting requirements for banks.

The plans were announced by Sam Woods, head of the BoE’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) during a meeting with a House of Lords financial services regulation committee on Wednesday. Woods told the committee easing the burden of its rules on banks and insurers can be done without unleashing “a race to the bottom” on financial regulation, the FT has reported.

He also said financial resilience and economic competitiveness could go hand in hand, according to the paper.

As part of the new plans, “PRA would free up insurers to invest quicker by allowing retrospective authorisation of investments. It will also outline plans this year to cut reporting requirements for banks, after reducing them for insurers by a third,” the FT has said.

As with existing BoE rules, “firms in the banking sector (banks, building societies, investment firms and credit unions) need to provide regulatory returns to the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA).”

Government pressure

The UK’s financial regulators have come under increasing pressure from the current government to end regulatory practices that curtail economic growth and investment.

Last November, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said in her debut Mansion House speech “regulations from the days of the financial crisis of 2008 had gone too far,” and that there was a need for a review in certain areas.

A month before that, Prime Minister Keir Starmer told an International Investment Forum in London he would pave the way for foreign investors to come and invest in Britain by “ripping up bureaucracy.”

Woods told the Lords committee that waiting for regulatory approval sometimes delays investments by insurers, but argued that the “matching adjustment investment accelerator” would remove this obstacle.

On reporting requirements for banks, he said new proposals will be published later this year to reduce the burden on banks.

The PRA says it works closely with the FCA and cross-shares data so that firms who are regulated by both bodies only have to submit one set of required data.