What’s the point of woke regulators?
The Bank of England’s pronouncements on the ability of any gender to become pregnant are just the latest example of how our financial and economic regulators are no longer fit for purpose. When they were first established their remit was clear – to protect customers from being exploited by monopoly or unscrupulous providers. Now most of them seem to see their economic responsibilities as secondary to their campaigns to drive social change.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) insists to those it regulates that ‘Climate change, like diversity and inclusion and other ESG issues must be a central part of how you do business’. Making profits or providing a good service to customers are seen as lesser concerns. In a speech last year its executive director of consumers and competition said, ‘firms and consumers face heightened pressures from the cost of living crisis but we must not lose sight of the importance of ensuring diverse representation and inclusive cultures’. Listed among the key activities in its business plan for 2023-24 are to, ‘continue our work with industry and regulators to drive improvements in Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) transparency’.
To be fair to the FCA they do not just talk the talk on diversity, it is at the centre of their own organisation. Their 60 page diversity report outlines how it supports every minority group in its organisation. It has an ‘InsideOut network’ which ‘aims to raise awareness of LGBT+ lived experience’ and which has spent the past year focused on intersectionality. There is also a network to support ‘LBT+ women, non-binary and bi+ employees, LGBT+ parents and those parenting LGBT+ children’. Their main achievement over the past year has been to ‘deploy system changes allowing colleagues to add their pronouns and the pronunciation of their names to our internal colleague directory’. The amount of time spent on all this must make those it regulates, at great expense, wonder how the FCA ever finds time to fit in its day job.
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