LONDON (Reuters) – Around 4,000 financial firms in Britain were at “heightened risk” of collapsing due to fallout from the pandemic, the Financial Conduct Authority said on Thursday.
The FCA surveyed 23,000 financial firms to check on their resilience to COVID-19, which last year triggered Britain’s worst economic downturn in 300 years.
“At end of October we’ve identified there are 4,000 financial services firms with low financial resilience and at heightened risk of failure,” said Sheldon Mills, the FCA’s executive director of consumers and competition.
“These are predominantly small and medium sized firms and approximately 30% have the potential to cause harm in failure.”
(Reporting by Huw Jones, editing by Sinead Cruise)
