Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority has held talks with trading platforms about easing its ban on retail access to financial prediction markets, The Times reported Friday. No rule has changed, and the regulator’s published position still backs the prohibition.

The FCA treats contracts referencing financial and certain climatic events as binary options, which all firms acting in or from the UK have been barred from selling, marketing or distributing to retail consumers since the rules took force on April 2, 2019. The regulator estimated at the time that the ban would save retail consumers up to £17 million a year. Christopher Woolard, then the FCA’s executive director of strategy and competition, called binary options gambling products dressed up as financial instruments.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

Industry participants have reportedly been lobbying for a change, presenting officials with evidence that millions of Britons already use overseas platforms with virtual private networks, which leaves them outside of UK protections.

The FCA’s own documents show the question moving slowly. Its perimeter report, published in March, lists prediction market products on non-financial events as an issue outside its remit and says the financial ones it has seen are binary options that remain subject to the permanent retail ban, which it considers appropriate “given the speculative, gambling-like nature” of the contracts. The same entry says the FCA will consider further work on access, or clarifying the perimeter, following its December discussion paper. That paper, DP25/3, calls them horizon contracts and asks whether speculative products should be regulated by their risk and return profile rather than their product label.

Even a reversal would open only half the market. Contracts on sport and politics fall to the Gambling Commission, so a platform offering a full slate of UK markets would need FCA permission for financial event contracts and a gambling licence for the rest.

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