The UK’s financial regulator has appointed a total of 62 suppliers to a four-year procurement vehicle, through which the watchdog will access a range of application development and support services
The UK’s finance services regulator has signed 62 suppliers to a £675m long-term framework to support the creation digital tools.
The Financial Conduct Authority entered into a four-year contract with the chosen suppliers on 14 September, newly published commercial documents reveal.
Over the coming four months and years, the firms will provide the FCA with a range of development and support for digital tools to be used across the watchdog’s operations.
The contract award notice said: “The FCA has procured a four-year multi-supplier framework agreement for the provision of services for application development, application maintenance and modern application development including transformation services to improve operational processes, procedures and delivery methodologies. The framework agreement was awarded to 62 partners who will support continued delivery of the technology change portfolio, maintain or improve the stability and performance of services, while helping the FCA in its ongoing DevOps, agile and transformation journey.”
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Between now and September 2027, the framework is expected to be worth £562.5m – or £675m, once VAT is applied. This would equate to spending of £168.75m a year, which represents a quarter of the annual operating costs of £669.7m revealed in the organisation’s 2022/23 accounts.
In his foreword to the annual report, FCA chief executive Nikhil Rathi said that the watchdog is already on a path of technological transformation, and is reaping the benefits.
“Having moved our core systems to the cloud, we are constantly leveraging new data capabilities to act more swiftly and react to firm and market issues at scale,” he said. “Analytics tools are speeding up case management and providing improved visibility of risk in supervised firms. Significantly increased investment in our people and technology has reduced our pending authorisations caseload by nearly 60 per cent, from around 12,500 to below 6,000.”
Rathi added: “We will continue to invest in technology, and bolstering capability, to support their ability to deliver our strategy.”
The annual report reveals that the FCA employs 4,131 full-time staff. The organisation regulates about 50,000 firms operating in UK financial markets, and describes its three core objectives as: protecting consumers; enhancing market integrity; and promoting competition. During the 2023 fiscal year it collected penalties of £212.6m as part of annual income of £699m.
The 62 firms featured on the digital framework are: Accolite Labs; Aker Systems; Agile Solutions; Airwalk Consulting Reply; Andigital; Answer Digital; Apprilis; Appvia; Atos; Axiologik; BJSS; Broadlight Global; Broadstones Solutions; Burendo; BBD Software; Coforge; Corecom Quality Engineering; Credera; Deloitte; D-Fine; Digital Works Consulting; Epam Systems; Ernst & Young; Fimatix; Finrege; Fujitsu; Green Park Interim & Executive; Hippo Digital; Hodfords Solutions; Infosys; ITC Infotech; Jumar solutions; Kainos Software; Kerv Digital; Kin and Carta; LTMindTree; Made Tech; Mastek; MLabs Digital; Newredo; PA Consulting; Pwc; Qualitest Group; QuayLogic; Rowe; Salesforce; Shift Left Group; Sopra Steria; Tata Consultancy Services; Tech City Labs; Tecknuovo; Transform UK Consulting; Valtech; VE3; Zensar Technologies; Zoocha; Aiimi; Unisys; Capgemini; Cognizant; NEC Software Solutions; Verylocals.
