LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's markets watchdog has asked financial firms from the European Union to complete a 15-minute survey to help it to deal with what could be thousands of requests to continue serving UK customers after Brexit.
The survey by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is for businesses that offer their financial services under EU "passporting" rules to customers in Britain from a base in another member state.
Passporting will end when Britain leaves the bloc in March next year and the UK government has said it will legislate, if necessary, to provide a temporary "permissions" scheme so that cross-border business can continue for a period of time after Brexit in March 2019.
The results of the survey will help to set up the permissions scheme because the watchdog will not have enough time to process full license applications before Brexit. Britain and the EU hopes to agree a transition deal later this month, which would ease the pressure until the end of 2020.
"We anticipate this notification will be a relatively simple process and that a system to enable firms and funds to do this will be set up ahead of exit day," the FCA said on its website.
"Notification will not require the submission of an application for authorization in the UK prior to exit day. We will set out further details on these proposals and how the scheme will operate in due course."
Survey questions cover contact details, EU laws under which firms are passporting into Britain and the firms' intentions regarding access to Britain's financial market after Brexit.