UK FCA DC Outpost Signals Deeper Global Regulatory Cooperation

Britain’s financial watchdog is officially setting up shop in the United States. In a bid to strengthen transatlantic regulatory ties, the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has stationed a senior official at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., marking the first time the FCA has established a physical presence on U.S. soil – see FCA establishes presence in the United States and Asia-Pacific.

Strengthening UK–U.S. Alignment

The FCA’s new outpost in Washington is designed to enhance day-to-day collaboration with U.S. regulators and policymakers, and to support cross-border financial activity. Working from the British Embassy and liaising with the UK Department for Business and Trade, former investment banker Miah will serve as a bridge between the UK and U.S. on financial oversight matters. Her mandate includes advancing UK–U.S. regulatory cooperation and aligning policies where feasible, as well as assisting firms operating across the Atlantic – for example, by guiding U.S. companies on how to comply with UK rules and vice versa.

The FCA is making a similar push in the Asia-Pacific, planning to open an office in Australia this summer, as it expands its global footprint under a new five-year strategy.

At its core, the FCA’s U.S. expansion aims to bolster transatlantic cooperation on financial regulation and innovation. Closer contact with American counterparts is expected to facilitate early dialogue on emerging risks and new financial products, from crypto-assets to AI-driven finance, ensuring a more harmonized approach. UK officials have indicated the desire to keep rules and oversight “joined up” across borders so that companies face fewer conflicting requirements when operating internationally.

For example, both UK and U.S. regulators are grappling with similar issues such as crypto trading, operational resilience, and sustainable finance and a recent IOSCO report – see IOSCO 2025 Thematic Review puts Regulators on Notice highlighted several areas where regulators are falling short globally. Greater coordination could lead to more consistent standards and begin to address these shortfalls.

Recent regulatory forums have seen authorities on both sides of the Atlantic discuss topics like cryptoassets regulation, artificial intelligence in finance, and climate-related disclosures, highlighting the overlapping agendas that such international cooperation can address.

A Global Push for Harmonization

Britain’s outreach in Washington is part of a broader trend toward international regulatory convergence. Around the world, financial regulators are ramping up cooperation through formal dialogues and agreements:

• United States–European Union: U.S. and EU officials meet regularly in the Joint Financial Regulatory Forum to align their oversight of global markets. At the latest forum in Washington in December 2024, participants from the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve, SEC and their European counterparts “emphasised close, ongoing U.S. and EU cooperation” across a range of issues. The agenda spanned everything from market stability and digital finance to anti-money laundering and sustainable finance – a signal that transatlantic regulators are comparing notes on nearly all facets of financial policy. This structured U.S.–EU dialogue, co-chaired by the U.S. Treasury and European Commission, helps ensure that when one side updates its rules or identifies risks, the other is in the loop.
• Asia-Pacific Dialogues: Across the Asia-Pacific, regulators are similarly deepening ties. In January 2025, the UK and Japan held a Financial Regulatory Forum in London, where top officials from Japan’s Financial Services Agency, the Bank of England, HM Treasury and the FCA met to coordinate on key policy areas. See UK-Japan Financial Regulatory Forum Joint Statement. They focused on issues like sustainable finance and climate-related disclosures, comparing approaches to ESG (environmental, social, governance) reporting and transition.
• Both countries “recognised the value of deepening bilateral cooperation” and agreed on the importance of consistent standards across jurisdictions. Elsewhere in the region, initiatives such as the Asia Region Funds Passport (linking markets like Australia and Singapore) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) financial forums aim to harmonize rules for cross-border investment products – underscoring an Asia-Pacific impulse toward mutual recognition of regulations.
• FinTech Bridges and Innovation Pacts: A number of jurisdictions are striking agreements specifically to foster innovation through cooperation. Notably, the UK has created “FinTech Bridge” accords with countries including Singapore, South Korea, and Australia, which seek to remove regulatory barriers to fintech services and promote joint innovation. The UK–Singapore FinTech Bridge, updated in late 2022, established a memorandum of understanding to coordinate on fintech regulation and “to remove regulatory barriers to fintech trade between the two nations.” See UK and Singapore strengthen fintech ties. By maintaining open dialogue between regulators and aligning rules for new financial technologies, these agreements help startups and established firms alike expand into each other’s markets more easily. Similar pacts cover areas like digital payments, crypto-assets, and RegTech, reflecting a worldwide push to balance innovation with coherent oversight.

The common thread in these efforts is a drive toward regulatory convergence and mutual recognition. Where possible, regulators are aiming to acknowledge each other’s standards – for instance, by deeming one country’s rules “equivalent” to another’s – so that financial firms don’t have to navigate completely different rulebooks in every market.

The UK’s post-Brexit strategy has leaned on this approach, seeking mutual recognition agreements to keep London open to global business while maintaining high standards. In practice, this could mean a UK bank operating in the U.S. might eventually face fewer duplicated requirements if authorities trust each other’s supervision.

Large markets like the EU have long used “equivalence” determinations to facilitate foreign firms’ access, and now the UK, U.S., and Asian regulators are exploring similar arrangements to reduce friction in cross-border finance.

Implications for Compliance

For compliance professionals and financial firms, these international developments are both promising and challenging. On one hand, closer alignment of regulations can simplify compliance for global companies. If watchdogs in London, Washington, Brussels and Tokyo are coordinating their rules on, say, anti-money-laundering controls or risk management, firms are less likely to encounter diverging requirements when expanding into new jurisdictions.

Moves toward mutual recognition could streamline licensing and reduce the need to build separate compliance programs from scratch in each country. A U.S. asset manager entering the UK, for example, may get guidance directly from the FCA’s Washington office and take comfort that UK rules won’t clash dramatically with those at home. “Easier access” to regulators, as the FCA put it, could translate into more predictability for firms navigating multiple regimes.

On the other hand, the convergence of regulators means compliance teams must stay attuned to a more interconnected rule-making environment. Global coordination often heralds new standards being implemented in unison. A change in capital requirements or a new crypto regulation agreed upon in an international forum could quickly propagate across markets. Compliance officers will need to monitor not just their primary regulator, but the broader international regulatory dialogue.

Enforcement is also going global – a misconduct issue flagged in one country may swiftly come to the attention of regulators elsewhere as information-sharing improves.

As regulatory complexity spans borders, technology solutions that can aggregate and interpret multi-jurisdictional requirements are needed. If authorities collaborate on data standards or reporting frameworks, solutions that work across regulatory and geographical borders can be delivered at lower economic cost.

Regulators themselves are encouraging this. For example, the Global Financial Innovation Network (GFIN), a coalition of over 50 regulators worldwide, was launched to provide a “global sandbox” for firms to test new fintech and compliance solutions across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously.

Through such initiatives, a firm could pilot an AI-driven anti-fraud system under the joint oversight of, say, the FCA, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), rather than having to run separate trials.  As jurisdictions converge around global standards and complexities are reduced, the economic burden of compliance should start to see some relief.

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