E-Learning Login
Compliance Portal
February 19, 2025
The FCA has received recent criticism over a decision to carry out a ‘mass delete event’ and delete any e-mails from staff inboxes which are more than a year old. In this blog, the FCA’s Director of Intelligence and Digital, Ian Phoenix, wants to set the record straight and explain what the FCA is doing, and why.
- Any emails received after 1st April 2025 will be deleted from inboxes after a year. This gives staff plenty of time to assess whether the contents of an email are a record and – if they are – save them to the central shared drive.
- The FCA is adamant that it is not “deleting evidence” or “hiding information” or “reducing transparency”, and that there is no change to its policy of what constitutes a record and how long it should be saved for.
- The FCA is modernising how it manages its records to make it more efficient and effective.
- Many of its records are already stored in a secure, shared repository, and the FCA wants to make sure the same goes for all e-mails which may be records, for example, those which explain how a particular decision was reached.
- The blog also addresses the need for change, explains the FCA’s new approach, and how this supports a commitment to better regulation.
- To address the possibility of individual FCA staff-member failure in relation to filing e-mails on time, firms sending anything important to the FCA should ensure that appropriate records are retained and stored safely in case of need.
