The Financial Conduct Authority has lost 49 senior employees from its supervisory and enforcement teams as part of a ‘voluntary resignation programme’, stoking fears that star workers are fleeing the regulator as it battles a morale crisis and backlogs created by Brexit and the pandemic. 

Some 93 senior staff took advantage of the UK markets regulator’s so-called mutually agreed resignation scheme — or Mars — in the year to April 2021, Financial News reported in June. The FCA’s annual report, published on 15 July, said the cost of the scheme amounted to more than £7m.