Financial pressures and financial sustainability

In light of the challenging economic environment, we’re scaling up our work with providers to better understand their financial positions.

We have published our financial viability and sustainability risk assessment framework to provide greater transparency about how we assess risk and apply regulatory judgement, and how this informs how we engage with and monitor providers.

Improving our data

In addition to the annual financial return, we ask for financial information on an interim basis. These provide timely information on providers' financial positions to ensure we understand how their finances are changing through the financial year.

We will also continue to ask universities and colleges facing large or complex financial risks to submit additional financial information more regularly.

Engaging with providers

We will continue to meet with providers to better understand what they're doing to ensure their financial sustainability.

These conversations help us to understand a provider’s individual context, whether they are exposed to risk or not, and ascertain whether we need to establish a deeper understanding of their financial management.

We will clearly communicate our assessment of a provider’s financial risk in line with our financial viability and sustainability risk assessment framework, including what you can expect in terms of monitoring, engagement and any potential regulatory action.

We will review and update our assessment where new information materially changes our view of a provider’s financial risk and communicate this as promptly as possible.

Where we identify financial challenges we may request more information from providers voluntarily, through F3 notices, or, where appropriate, student protection directions or specific conditions of registration. We may also arrange to visit in person or undertake a more detailed financial review.

Detailed financial reviews

For some providers we may undertake a more detailed financial review.

We may undertake this work directly, or we may work with financial consultants with the expertise to help us understand, in greater depth, the financial status of an institution.

Using consultants provides us with additional capacity and a greater range of expertise to support our financial monitoring. Working with them will be a routine part of our financial sustainability regulation.

The use of consultants is not a signal that a university or college is at imminent risk of financial failure and should not be viewed as an indication of its financial position.