Today's 2015/16 business plan showed the regulator's Ongoing Regulatory Activity budget for the year will be £479m, an increase of £27m or 6%. This has been driven by investment in staff and in information systems, the FCA reported. Staff costs will rise to £279.9m, up from £263.8m.
The Annual Funding Requirement will be £481.6m, an increase of 7.9%. This includes operating costs and the additional scope changes it needs to embed the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive.
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The FCA announced it is increasing the number of full time staff to about 3,060. The FCA said this will help "deliver our competition objective, undertake more enforcement activity to combat market abuse and unauthorised business, and enhance our supervisory model for benchmarks."
Officials said in the report: "We will also invest in Project Innovate, our new initiative to ensure the regulatory environment is supporting innovation in the market. It is vital that we attract and retain the right people to achieve our objectives. In particular, we will continue to invest in the FCA Academy to offer continuous, relevant training and development to our people.
"This will be supported by our ongoing work to upgrade and improve our information systems (IS) and technology platform to ensure that our systems efficiently support our key regulatory functions."
The FCA added it estimates it will receive a financial penalty rebate of £40.3m in 2015/16.