Britain’s EU leave date of 29th March has now been extended to 12th April after weeks of negotiations. By this date, it will be decided whether to leave the EU without a deal, whether to accept a lengthy delay involving holding European parliament elections or whether to cancel Brexit altogether.

With this in mind, I thought I would share with you a couple of my favourite Brexit memes just to kick things off (please note that they are in no way meant as a political statement – they just made me laugh).

“Trying to understand Brexit is like trying to figure out what colour the letter 7 smells like.”

“Paying my taxes to pay for Brexit is like asking a guy on death row if he has any change to put in the meter for the electric chair.”

and my favourite…

“Brexit is like being in a plane hurtling towards the ground with the pilot and co-pilot arguing over who would crash it better.”

Ok, so now that I have made light of the most serious single event to impact our country since the Second World War, I’m now going to get serious.

On Thursday I was at a presentation by the Financial Conduct Authority where they asked (and I paraphrase) that we all take the necessary steps to prepare ourselves for Brexit and that we need to plan for all outcomes. At the same time there was a wry smile that spread across the faces of the presenters. Although they never said it, their body language was enough… “We want you to prepare for an outcome that no one knows, nor understands!”

The presentation and the accompanying Question and Answer session focussed on the need for policy to be in place at all financial services firms to cover each Brexit eventuality.

They then went on to explain that all the deals they have concluded to date have been one-way agreements, namely that European businesses will be able to carry on as normal, but that there is no such agreement for British based firms with the European Regulators.

Now, the Brexiteers amongst you will shout – “and that’s exactly why we need to leave! Too many one way deals.”

Anyway, here is my summary of the meeting and what we know from the regulator.

  • The Treasury has carried out something called “onshoring” – This is the adoption of EU legislation into UK statute. The Financial Conduct Authority has assisted in this regard, meaning that the standards we adhered to previously have, by and large, been carried forward. So those of you that hoped for a simpler financial services regime will be disappointed.
  • Passporting will cease in the event of a ‘no deal’ Brexit. So for those firms who currently have advisers who operate overseas, they will need to ‘onshore’ their advisers or will need to approach the regulator of the country in which the adviser works and establish whether what they are doing constitutes a regulated activity. It is therefore the plan of the Network to remove all passporting permissions in the event of a ‘no deal’ Brexit. If you currently work overseas, please speak with your Compliance Manager to agree an approach for each Brexit eventuality.
  • If you have any cross border customers, or if you are an adviser in an EU country that is currently in the process of transacting business, you will need to immediately conduct a risk assessment to establish the potential impact on your customers; again, your Compliance Manager will be on hand to help.
  • EU data protection law has been written into UK statute, therefore the same rules apply (think back to May and GDPR). You will therefore need to assess what data is held and where. Brexit could impact whether you can continue to use EU data centres. Of course, this may impact our provider partners and potentially, it may also impact on contracts – we are investigating this at present, and you should too.

The regulator concluded with the following pieces of guidance:

  1. Communicate with your customers and demonstrate that this has happened;
  2. Consider and then explain any expected impact to your customers;
  3. React in a clear and timely fashion;
  4. Make sure your customers understand the impact and what is expected of them.

They then concluded with this message – “Continue to prepare for all outcomes.”

Of course, there may also be further developments and there may be an implementation period, but we just don’t know! As suggested, we will keep watching the Financial Conduct Authority’s website and social media feeds.

More importantly, does anyone want to buy two tickets to Amsterdam out of Birmingham on 29th March? [Sic]