Welcome to Insurance Briefing - a fortnightly round-up of insurance legal and business developments with analysis and commentary from the insurance team at Pinsent Masons.

The topics we're focusing on this week include:

Major UK review of financial services regulation announced

"A major, long-term review" of the UK's regulatory framework for financial services has been announced by chancellor Philip Hammond. Hammond outlined his plans for the review in a speech delivered to City executives on Thursday last week."This review will deliver a regulatory system that continues to enable, rather than stifle, innovation, that protects consumers, maintains the highest possible standards, is proportionate and policed by independent regulators, and that recognises that the EU will continue to be one of our major trading partners, even as it lays the groundwork for the more global nature of our future financial services industry," Hammond said. Read more...

FCA looks to future of 'open finance'

The UK's City regulator is to explore how data could be opened up across financial services. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said it plans to publish a 'call for input' later this year on 'open finance', in which it said it will "look at how the principles of open banking, such as those relating to data sharing, can be applied across financial services". Financial services and technology law expert Luke Scanlon of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law, said: "This is another example of the FCA being on the front foot and responding to market developments at a very early stage in comparison to regulators in other parts of the world." Read more...

US securities regulator opens fraud case on UK bitcoin firm

A UK-based cryptocurrency trading platform defrauded more than 1,000 investors, including some in the US, of at least $147 million worth of bitcoin, the US securities regulator has claimed.The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has filed a civil enforcement case in the New York courts against Control-Finance Ltd and its sole director, Benjamin Reynolds. The company fraudulently solicited customers to purchase and transfer bitcoin to them, claiming that they employed expert virtual currency traders who would earn daily profits on the bitcoin, according to the complaint. Read more...

Concern over attack on banks' 'data integrity'

Cyber attacks that corrupt data held by banks could cause "maximum damage" to financial stability in the UK, a member of the Financial Policy Committee at the Bank of England has warned. Professor Anil Kashyap, external member of the Financial Policy Committee at the Bank of England, told the Treasury Select Committee earlier this week that he worries more about "data integrity" attacks than "denial of service" attacks that cause banking systems to go offline temporarily. He said it is only a matter of time before a major data integrity incident occurs. Read more...

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