UK Finance Pushes Nine-Point Growth Plan in King Speech
UK Finance used its king speech to press for a nine-point growth plan focused on mortgages, redress, capital rules, and home-buying. David Postings said banking and finance sit “right at the heart of the push for growth,” and the group argued that recent reforms are already feeding through to first-time buyers. The plan now moves from diagnosis to delivery.
Mortgage Reform and UK Finance
UK Finance published the nine-point plan in 2025 and said the government's growth agenda will be judged on competitive mortgage rates, new homes, affordable energy bills, household resilience, and more support for businesses. Postings said, “The government has outlined a clear and ambitious direction for economic growth, and banking and finance sit right at the heart of the push for growth. UK Finance and our members have helped shape a financial services reform agenda that is already showing results.”
He added, “The priority now is to focus on delivery, which will strengthen the sector’s contribution to supporting people, businesses, and communities across the UK.”
FCA Review and Capital Rules
UK Finance welcomed the Financial Policy Committee's plan to review the Tier 1 capital benchmark if it led to reduced capital stacks for individual banks. The group said lower capital requirements would lower the cost of lending and improve mortgage rates and access to lending for households and SMEs. It also said the Financial Conduct Authority's Mortgage Rule Review needed to go further and address rules implemented for a different era.
The redress process drew the same treatment. UK Finance said reforms should be prioritised to resolve uncertainty that fed into product costs, constrained access to credit, and restricted innovation.
First-Time Buyers and Home-Buying
UK Finance said the progress of recent mortgage rule changes was already evident in an 18% rise in first-time buyer numbers in 2025, tying that increase to loan-to-income adjustments. The organisation also called on the government to address home buying and selling transactions to limit the failure rate of transactions.
UK Finance said extending homeownership and reducing collapsed transactions would unlock a £10bn retrofit opportunity each year, support 200,000 jobs, and reduce household energy bills by around £2bn-3bn each year. It also called for reform of interest-only rules to widen the acceptance of repayment strategies and make retirement interest-only more accessible.
Green Finance Through 2027
The group asked the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority to conclude their consultation and proposals around the LTI flow limit, and it called on the government to publish and introduce a roadmap on how financial services would support home buying and selling reforms without delay. UK Finance also wants the government to implement its green and retrofit finance framework, with recommendations introduced by the end of 2027.
For households and lenders, the immediate measure of success is whether the next round of reforms makes mortgages cheaper to access, keeps more purchases from collapsing, and turns the 2025 gains for first-time buyers into something broader.
