The FCA’s new rules and guidance to help tackle Non-Financial Misconduct came into effect on 1 September 2026. These represent a significant expansion of the regulatory focus on workplace culture across UK financial services.
Non-financial misconduct includes behaviour that is not of a clearly financial nature, such as bullying, harassment and violence. Where NFM is serious and goes unchecked, it can harm individuals, firms, and confidence in financial services. The regulator has explicitly linked bullying and harassment to concerns regarding decision-making, risk management, and market integrity.
Senior managers may also face increased scrutiny regarding the steps they have taken to prevent, identify and respond to misconduct within their business areas. The FCA has made clear that managers are expected to take reasonable steps to address NFM, and failures may themselves constitute regulatory breaches.
NFM will be considered when assessing the fitness and propriety of Approved Persons at firms.
These rules are not retrospective, and the guidance states that firms do not need to monitor employees’ private lives or social media accounts, investigate allegations about employees’ private lives if they are trivial, implausible or irrelevant, or do anything contrary to privacy, employment or other relevant law.
NFM is included within ITC’s Conduct training module that network members complete, and ITC will continue to enhance the NFM content to keep it up to date.
Network members should have their own staff policies in these areas, but continue to report incidents of NFM to ITC where the incidents relate to financial services activities, appreciating that for the types of behaviour covered by NFM the distinction between financial services (insurance and finance) and non-financial services (selling cars) may be blurred, and the behaviour is likely to be across both. If in doubt, please contact ITC to discuss.