Lawmakers to buttress post-Brexit Britain as a financial centre

By Huw Jones

LONDON, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Britain's lawmakers launched an
inquiry on Friday aimed at ensuring its financial services
remain globally competitive after the country's full departure
from the European Union next month.

"We'll make a series of recommendations for how the
government, public bodies and the sector itself can ensure that
the UK remains a premier financial centre," said Mel Stride,
chair of parliament's Treasury Select Committee.

Britain left the EU last January and full access to the bloc
under transition arrangements ends on Dec. 31, with 7,500 jobs
and assets worth around a trillion pounds having already left
the City of London for new EU financial hubs.

The inquiry will build on reforms already outlined by
Britain's finance minister Rishi Sunak last week that include
making UK listings rules more attractive, amending insurance
capital rules, and a sales tax break worth 800 million pounds on
financial exports to the EU.

Lawmakers will consider what skills and immigration policy
UK financial services will need as banks worry they will no
longer be able to hire talent easily after Brexit promised
tighter controls of immigration.

It will also look at how regulators should be funded and
whether they should have objectives that include wider public
policy issues like consumer interests.

The finance ministry has rejected calls from some lawmakers
for regulators to have a blanket statutory objective to consider
the competitiveness of Britain's financial sector when writing
new rules.

Britain's financial services minister John Glen said on
Thursday that leaving the EU meant "regulating differently,
regulating better".

"We want to become the most open and competitive financial
services centre in the world," Glen told TheCityUK's national
conference.

(Reporting by Huw Jones, Editing by William Maclean)