Experienced advice,
challenge and support
About RBAS
RBAS provides independent, experienced advice, challenge and support at senior levels.
Richard Barfield Bsc FCA has broad-ranging advisory and business expertise gained in a long career at PwC. He was also Finance Director at Barclaycard and at Hertz UK.
We assist financial services clients on risk and regulatory issues, specialising in prudential risk. We have been working closely with the Hogan Lovells financial services team since 2019, often with early-stage and FCA solo-regulated firms.
From a wider perspective, we have contributed a range of pro-bono articles and briefing papers on Brexit and its consequences.
Richard Barfield Advisory Services Limited is incorporated in England and Wales with registered number 09993013. Privacy notice.
Richard Barfield Advisory Services Limited is incorporated in England and Wales with registered number 09993013.
Services
Services
Our core services relate to governance, board effectiveness and prudential risk.
We support new firms on the authorisation process and assist established firms to prepare for new regulatory requirements or respond to FCA and PRA concerns.
Clients
Our clients are often early-stage firms or challenger banks faced with meeting rising regulatory expectations as the business grows.
Clients range from banks to investment management firms and payment institutions as well as industry bodies such as Innovate Finance.
Brexit
We created the Brexit FactBase website to provide comprehensive spin-free Brexit facts.
We have also contributed several papers and articles to the Brexit debate, mainly on trade-related issues and UK trade performance.
Selected publications
Spotlight on services
On the third anniversary of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the UK’s overall services trade looks healthy, but ……
- UK services ‘superpower’ status is under threat
- EU-UK trade barriers have already had serious effects
- UK services exports to EU have flatlined
Updated January 2024 (originally published September 2023)
Services trade - the way forward
Presentation at the excellent Trade Unlocked conference on 20 June 2023 at the Birmingham NEC:
- Critical role of UK services trade
- TCA and recent trade trends
- Routes to a better future
Presented June 2023
Banking Regulation: Mastering the New Regulatory Landscape
Written by global team of PwC practitioners, with a foreword by Bill Coen, Secretary General for the Basel Committee:
- How to build the changes from post-financial-crisis regulation into the business
- Governance, risk management, culture, conduct
- RWA, capital, liquidity
- Technology and infrastructure
- Resolution and restructuring
Publisher: Thomson Reuters/Sweet and Maxwell, 2016
Brexit FactBase
Website in e-book style:
- Objective, spin-free facts on Brexit issues
- Comprehensive Brexit information in one place
- Free to access
Published in 2018 and updated regularly.
Mind the gap
- 2021 quantification of the gap in services exports caused by Brexit
Publisher: UK in a Changing Europe, King’s College London, April 2022
The new costs for business post-Brexit
- Quick scan of the new Brexit ‘red tape curtain’
- Cost estimate at £25 billion a year (before any loss of exports)
- Implications for UK exports of goods and services to the EU
Publisher: UK in a Changing Europe, King’s College London, February 2021
UK trade and the World Trade Organisation
- Extensive briefing for non-specialists on WTO, UK trade and the Brexit trade options
- ‘The best explainer on tariffs, WTO etc. that I have seen’ – Professor Judith Freedman (Oxon)
- An outstanding team of experts contributed including: Sir Martin Donnelly, Andrew Sentance CBE, Professor L Alan Winters CB, George Peretz QC, Professor George Yarrow and Peter Ungphakorn.
Publisher: Richard Barfield Advisory Services, September 2018
A Practitioner's Guide to Basel III and Beyond
- Complete guide to the proposed new Basel III Accord
- Explores how the new regime differs from Basel II, and its implementation
- Written by a team of experts from PwC led by Richard Barfield.
Publisher: Thomson Reuters/Sweet and Maxwell, 2011 (reprinted 2012)