A mere £755 million is spent each year to fund the costs of the FCA and their 5,000 employees, according to recently released accounts. Staff costs are £402m – over £80k per employee. What other extras can there be?
IT costs to run their ghastly software are £92million, or £18k per employee per annum. We are highly attuned to software costs at BAT, since we run a software that costs most users £50 pm. So we ask, “What other organisation spends that amount of money per employee on software?”
Well actually, The Bank of England actually beats the FCA hands down, with some £99m per annum spent on the same number of employees. And in fact, if you look closely at the accounts in the private sector – SJP, HL, AJ Bell and Rathbones, a bulk of their software costs are hidden – taken out of expenditure to flatter the profit, and instead added to the balance sheet as an intangible asset and amortised over as many as twenty years. Software is eating up the world, and taking over rent as the number one overhead, after employees, for business in financial services.