• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Finance Innovation Lab HomepageFinance Innovation Lab

  • Our work
    • Overview
    • Growing purpose-driven finance
    • Shifting mainstream finance
    • Influencing policy, regulation and law
    • Building a powerful community
  • Publications
  • News & blog
  • Events
  • About us
    • About
    • Vision and strategy
    • Culture and values
    • Our people
    • Accounts and funders
    • Support us
    • Work with us
    • Contact
  • Donate

The Regulatory Compass

July 3, 2018
Share on LinkedIn Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on E-mail

We are living through a period of major political and economic uncertainty. While Brexit and new global forces reshape our economy, the rise of new technologies could set our financial system on the path to greater fairness, responsibility and democracy – or the reverse.

Do we cling on to the status quo, with all its shortcomings? Or do we seize the opportunity to step back and ask ourselves what kind of financial system we want – and how we can regulate for that?

Today the Finance Innovation Lab launches our landmark publication The Regulatory Compass: Towards a purpose-driven approach to financial regulation.

The report, which was funded by Barrow Cadbury Trust, draws on the experiences of the Innovation Lab’s community of purpose-led innovators to argue that rather than being ‘purpose-neutral’, regulation is often designed around the large, shareholder-focussed firms that dominate the market. We explore how regulatory assumptions hinder financial firms focussed on social and environmental impact, and we identify three conceptual fallacies that limit the ability of regulators to embed social purpose in their approach.

UK regulators and the policymakers who instruct them need to develop a more explicit and more holistic concept of what social purpose means in the context of financial services. Understanding how the financial system is delivering on this ultimate purpose requires regulators to have new mandates, rooted in democratic consultation on the purpose of finance; a different mindset, embracing fully human-centred regulation; and new metrics that assess how well the financial system and financial firms are fulfilling their ultimate purposes.

The Regulatory Compass aims to open up a new debate about the future of financial regulation in a changing world. It offers an important message not just to regulators and policymakers, but to all who want to make finance serve a purpose beyond profit.

Download the executive summary here or the full report here.

Back to all blog posts
Partners for a New Economy invest in the Lab’s work to transform finance

< PREVIOUS

Partners for a New Economy invest in the Lab’s work to transform finance

#FHFellowship: Final Evaluation revealed

NEXT >

#FHFellowship: Final Evaluation revealed

Get more content like this

"*" indicates required fields

Please send me:
Name*
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

See our archive of newsletters  | Privacy policy

Footer

Our work

  • Growing purpose-driven finance
  • Shifting mainstream finance
  • Influencing law, regulation and policy
  • Building a powerful community

About us

  • Vision and strategy
  • Culture and values
  • Our people
  • Accounts and funders
  • Work with us
  • Support us
  • Contact us
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook

Privacy policy


© 2023 Finance Innovation Lab | The Finance Innovation Lab is a Registered Charity (number 1165269) and Company Limited by Guarantee (number 09380418)