Transitional provisions and regimes

The Treasury has already introduced numerous transitional provisions and regimes within financial services legislation made under the EU Withdrawal Act. These address some of the most significant changes to firms’ regulatory obligations whilst providing maximum continuity and minimal disruption to firms and other regulated persons and consumers.

The transitional provisions and regimes include, but are not limited to the:

• temporary permission regime (TPR)[2] for FSMA passporting, payment services and e-money firms
• financial services contracts regime[3] for FSMA passporting, payment services and e-money firms
• temporary marketing permission regime for UCITS and AIFS
• the transitional provision for temporary permission firms in UK MiFIR
• transitional provisions for: 
  • operators, trustees and depositories of EEA UCITS which have been notified for marketing under passport in the UK
  • EEA domiciled operators, trustees and depositaries of UK UCITS that have entered the TPR
  • tied agents under section 39A of FSMA, certain disclosures of pre-contract consumer credit information
  • Credit Rating Agencies
  • Trade Repositories in relation to EMIR and SFTR
  • Data Reporting Service Providers under MiFID II
  • e-commerce firms to run off existing contracts and in relation to financial promotions required by a contract entered into before the end of the transition period
• transitional on STS eligibility under Article 18 of the Securitisation Regulation and on securitisation repositories
• transitional and savings provisions applying to Building Societies in respect of standards for preparation of accounts and funding limits, for prospectuses approved by an EEA state and passported into the UK before the end of the transition period and the FCA transitional in relation to the Prospectus Regulation Rules
• FCA transitional on amendments to the disclosure guidance and transparency rules, on amendments to the listing rules, and other specific transitional provisions in the FCA handbook, such as in SUP TP12
• transitional direction in our main transitional directions[4] on distance marketing for certain EEA firms 
• saving provision for Gibraltar-based firms
• the transitional provision for foreign benchmark administrators

The TTP did not apply to the transitional provisions and regimes set out above.

Firms need to be compliant with any obligations in accordance with the specific provision or regime, for example they should have made a notification before the transition period ended in relation to the TPR and should be compliant with any rules that apply to persons under any of those provisions or regimes.

Additionally, where an area already contains a transitional provision or regime, we generally did not apply the TTP in addition to that transitional provision or regime. For example, in relation to the transitional provision for EEA prospectuses approved before the transition period ended, the TTP did not affect a person’s duty to comply with the new onshored requirements for EEA prospectuses which were not approved before the end of the transition period.