The Financial Conduct Authority has proposed to introduce an administration charge of £50 for feepayers that require it to issue paper invoices instead of taking advantage of its online portal.
This came within its Regulatory fees and levies: policy proposals for 2020/21 consultation paper.
The FCA wants comments on this proposal by 13 January 2020.
It said within a previous consultation paper that “the environmental advantages and efficiency savings of online invoicing and pointed out that other firms were picking up the additional costs of issuing paper invoices to firms that did not use the online facilities”.
Online invoices
The portal will provide a “one-stop shop” on fees.
It gives firms the ability to view, download or print invoices, view statements, pay invoices online by card, set up/amend a direct debit instruction, query invoices online, submit bank details to receive refunds by bank transfer and submit fee tariff data online, as well as providing access to a variety of fees information.
For firms which do not want to use the portal, they can opt to use the application as an emailing service only and receive a pdf copy of their invoice with the FCA’s invoice notification.
Responses
In the 2018/19 proposal paper, the FCA discussed the possibility of introducing an annual charge of £50 to £100 for firms which required paper invoicing.
It received six responses to this idea in April 2018.
Most supported a charge on the principle that users should pay, but one was concerned about the impact on smaller firms and several stressed that the charge should be justified by the cost.
Only one objected to the suggestion, arguing that fee-payers may have good reasons for preferring paper invoices.
At that time, 15% of fee-payers were using paper invoices, while currently, less than 8% receive paper invoices.
The FCA said: “As fewer fee-payers continue to opt for paper invoicing, any economies of scale are eroded and the costs per firm of printing and posting documents become more expensive.
“It is unreasonable for other fee-payers to continue to bear these additional costs.”
Fair
“We consider £50 per firm represents a fair contribution per firm but our objective is not to recover our current administrative costs,” the regulator added.
“Our objective is that all fee-payers should recognise the advantages of online invoicing and so move away from paper invoicing.
“We will consider our policy has succeeded when we have no additional costs to recover because all fee-payers are engaging with us electronically.
“We hope all fee-payers will opt for online invoicing without waiting to be charged but, in the meantime, the charge will save other firms from paying for the ones that do not.
“If a small core of fee-payers continue to resist online invoicing, we may in the future consider making on-line invoicing mandatory.”
