Concurrent competition powers: who enforces competition law in regulated sectors
In short: Concurrent competition powers let the FCA, PSR, Ofcom and five other sector regulators apply the Competition Act 1998, not just the CMA. The CMA’s annual concurrency report, published on 2 June 2026, shows that in 2025-26 only two sector regulators ran Competition Act cases, while reform and the PSR-into-FCA merger are about to redraw who holds the pen.
If your business operates in payments, telecoms, energy or rail, the competition regulator most likely to write to you is not the Competition and Markets Authority. It is your own sector regulator. Under the concurrency arrangements, the FCA, the PSR, Ofcom and five other regulators can enforce the same competition prohibitions the CMA enforces, in the sectors they already supervise. The CMA’s twelfth annual concurrency report, published on 2 June 2026, sets out how those shared powers were used in the year to 31 March 2026. It matters now because two changes are about to alter that picture: the abolition of the PSR and the absorption of its functions into the FCA, and a January 2026 proposal to scrap market studies and market investigations in favour of a single-phase market review.
Key findings (CMA annual concurrency report 2026)
- Two of the eight sector regulators with concurrent powers used their Competition Act 1998 enforcement powers in 2025-26: the FCA and Ofgem. Source: CMA, Annual report on concurrency for 2026.
- Four new Competition Act investigations were launched in the regulated sectors, against five ongoing at the start of the year, with eight ongoing at year end. Source: CMA concurrency report 2026, Table 2.
- No infringement decision and no statement of objections were issued in the regulated sectors during the year; one set of commitments was accepted. Source: CMA concurrency report 2026, Table 2.
- The FCA exceptionally named Mastercard, Visa and PayPal as the parties to its March 2026 digital-wallet investigations under the Chapter I and Chapter II prohibitions. Source: FCA, Competition Act 1998 investigations.
- The PSR was given permission in February 2026 to intervene in Trial 3 of the Merchant Interchange Fee Umbrella Proceedings, a set of claims worth more than £1 billion. Source: CMA concurrency report 2026.
| Sector regulator | What it did under the Competition Act 1998 in 2025-26 | Statutory base |
|---|---|---|
| FCA | Ran investigations into low-latency connectivity (London Stock Exchange) and accepted-in-principle commitments; opened digital-wallet investigations into Mastercard, Visa and PayPal in March 2026 | Financial services concurrency under the Competition Act 1998 |
| PSR | Intervened in Trial 3 of the £1bn-plus interchange Umbrella Proceedings on the section 9 exemption; assisted the FCA on its card-scheme casework | Payment systems concurrency under FSBRA 2013 |
| Ofcom | No new Competition Act case; its 2023 cloud market study led to the CMA market investigation that reported in July 2025 | Communications Act 2003, section 371 |
| Ofgem | Accepted commitments from Scotia Gas Networks in December 2025, closing a Chapter II gas-connection investigation with no infringement finding | Gas and electricity concurrency under the Competition Act 1998 |
How concurrent competition powers work
Concurrent competition powers let a sector regulator apply general competition law inside its own sector. Section 54 and Schedule 10 of the Competition Act 1998 give the FCA, PSR, Ofcom, Ofgem, Ofwat, the ORR, the CAA and the Northern Ireland utility regulator the power to apply the Chapter I prohibition on anti-competitive agreements and the Chapter II prohibition on abuse of a dominant position, alongside the CMA. The same regulators can conduct market studies under Part 4 of the Enterprise Act 2002. Part 4 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 modernised the regime and gave the CMA primacy on allocating cases; the Competition Act 1998 (Concurrency) Regulations 2014 set out the procedure for deciding who leads.
The design logic is that the regulator with the deepest knowledge of a sector is best placed to spot and pursue a competition problem in it. For a payment service provider or an electronic communications provider, the practical consequence is that the body that licenses, supervises and fines you also holds competition-enforcement powers over you. The CMA and the regulators coordinate through the UK Competition Network, a forum for sharing case-identification techniques and know-how, and through secondments between the bodies.
Payments: the FCA and PSR as competition enforcers
Payments was the most active regulated sector for competition work in 2025-26. The FCA ran investigations into the supply of low-latency connectivity services between the London Stock Exchange and rival trading venues, and into the lease of rooftop space at the exchange’s data centre. In September 2025 it published a notice of intention to accept commitments from the London Stock Exchange Group and the building’s landlord to resolve those concerns. In March 2026 the FCA opened fresh Chapter I and Chapter II investigations into the funding and usage of PayPal’s digital wallet, and exceptionally named the parties: Mastercard, Visa and PayPal. The detail of that probe is set out in the analysis of the FCA’s digital-wallet investigation.
The Competition Appeal Tribunal granted the PSR permission in February 2026 to intervene in Trial 3 of the Merchant Interchange Fee Umbrella Proceedings. Those linked claims, worth more than £1 billion, concern whether Mastercard and Visa default multilateral interchange fees infringed the Chapter I prohibition; Trial 3 turns on whether the fees are exempt under section 9 of the Competition Act 1998. Trial 3 is listed for October 2027. Separately, the FCA and PSR issued a January 2026 joint statement that they would not at this stage prioritise a Competition Act investigation into the centralised access-fee pricing model being developed by the UK Payments Initiative for commercial variable recurring payments; the CMA confirmed it did not intend to take a different prioritisation position.
Telecoms: Ofcom, cloud and strategic market status
Ofcom opened no new Competition Act case in the year, but its earlier markets work produced the most consequential outcome in the report. In 2023 Ofcom referred the supply of public cloud infrastructure services to the CMA for a market investigation under the Enterprise Act 2002. That investigation concluded in July 2025, finding that Amazon and Microsoft hold positions of significant market power, with data egress fees, interoperability barriers and Microsoft’s software licensing limiting customer choice. Rather than impose Enterprise Act remedies, the inquiry group recommended that the CMA use its digital-markets powers under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 to consider designating the two firms with strategic market status. In March 2026 the CMA Board decided to launch a strategic-market-status investigation into Microsoft’s business software ecosystem, commencing in May 2026, while continuing to press both firms on egress fees and interoperability.
The cloud sequence shows the concurrency regime feeding into the newer digital-markets toolkit: a sector regulator’s market study refers a market to the CMA, the market investigation diagnoses the problem, and the chosen remedy route is the strategic-market-status regime rather than a classic Enterprise Act order. For any provider of digital infrastructure to regulated firms, that is the pathway now worth tracking.
Reform and the future of concurrent competition powers
The structure described above is about to change twice over. First, the government’s January 2026 consultation on refining the competition regime, which closed for responses on 31 March 2026, proposes to replace the existing market study and market investigation procedures with a single-phase market review that can itself result in remedies. For concurrency, the consultation would recast a sector regulator’s power to make a market investigation reference: instead of referring a market, a regulator would recommend that the CMA launch a market review. It would also let concurrent regulators, by mutual consent, monitor and enforce remedies the CMA imposes in their sectors. A working group of the CMA and the sector regulators is considering the concurrency elements.
Second, the PSR is being abolished and its functions transferred to the FCA, a change set out in the Financial Services and Markets Bill 2026. The two bodies are already working as one on competition casework: the report records the PSR assisting the FCA on the Mastercard, Visa and PayPal investigations. When the merger completes, payments competition concurrency consolidates into a single financial-services regulator, removing the PSR as a distinct holder of concurrent competition powers.
What this means for regulated firms
The practical message is that competition-law exposure in a regulated sector usually arrives through the sector regulator, not the CMA. That has three consequences. A competition investigation can run alongside, or grow out of, ordinary supervisory contact, so the same information you give your regulator for prudential or conduct purposes sits with the body that can open a Competition Act case. The remedy a regulator reaches for may be its sector powers rather than the Competition Act: the report records the PSR using specific directions under the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013 on card-scheme fees, and Ofwat and the ORR using their sector statutes where the conduct raised regulatory rather than competition concerns. And private litigation is now doing much of the heavy lifting, with regulators intervening to assist the Competition Appeal Tribunal rather than prosecuting; the £1bn-plus interchange proceedings and the water-pollution class action are the current examples. Mapping this regulatory overlay early matters most where a transaction in these sectors is in prospect; our regulatory due diligence page sets out the standard scope.
Viewpoint
The headline number in the report, two of eight regulators using their Competition Act powers, understates how much concurrent competition powers shape life in the regulated sectors. The pressure shows up earlier, in supervisory dialogue, prioritisation statements and commitments, long before a statement of objections. In my experience, the binding constraint is rarely the prospect of a fine; it is the cost and disruption of an information-gathering exercise that a sector regulator can open under either its sector powers or the Competition Act, and the difficulty of predicting which it will choose. The reform now in consultation makes that prediction harder, because the proposed single-phase market review blurs the line between a market study and a binding remedy. The consolidation of the PSR into the FCA cuts the other way, giving payments firms a single competition regulator to deal with. Watch the concurrency working group’s output and the FCA’s first full year holding the PSR’s competition mandate; both will tell you more about real enforcement risk than the case count does.
Frequently asked questions
Which UK regulators have concurrent competition powers?
Eight sector regulators share competition-enforcement powers with the CMA: the FCA, the PSR, Ofcom, Ofgem, Ofwat, the Office of Rail and Road, the Civil Aviation Authority and the Northern Ireland Authority for Utility Regulation. Each can apply the Chapter I and Chapter II prohibitions of the Competition Act 1998 and conduct market studies under the Enterprise Act 2002 within its sector.
What is the concurrency report?
The CMA must publish an annual report assessing how the concurrency arrangements operated in the financial year. The 2026 edition, published on 2 June 2026, is the twelfth and covers 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026. It records how the sector regulators used their competition powers and how they cooperated with the CMA.
Does the PSR merger change who enforces payments competition law?
Yes. The Financial Services and Markets Bill 2026 abolishes the PSR and transfers its functions to the FCA. Once complete, payments competition concurrency sits with a single financial-services regulator rather than being split between the FCA and the PSR, although the two already cooperate closely on competition casework.
What is replacing market studies and market investigations?
The government consulted in January 2026 on replacing the two-stage market study and market investigation process with a single-phase market review that can result in remedies. For sector regulators, the proposal would replace the power to make a market investigation reference with a power to recommend that the CMA open a review, and would allow regulators to monitor CMA remedies in their sectors by mutual consent.
For advice on a competition investigation or market review in a regulated sector, or on the competition overlay in a telecoms or payments transaction, contact Rob Bratby at Bratby Law.
