The average time taken to get authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority has continued to fall after the regulator took action to address a backlog.
Between October and December 2017 the average processing time for an application for authorisation to work in the financial services sector was 11 weeks.
This is around a month less than between January and March 2017 when it took an average of around 15 weeks for an application for retail authorisation to be determined.
It is also a fall of around three months over the past two years, with the average application period between April and June 2016 being slightly less than 25 weeks.
The FCA said: "The number of cases beyond service standard continues to reduce and reflects remaining complex consumer credit and peer-to-peer firms. There remain a very small number of outstanding decisions in this population.
"For retail and consumer credit cases, the increase in work in progress is a result of a decrease in determination volume reflecting seasonal factors."
The average amount of time taken to process a variation of permission application increased to just above 10 weeks - up from eight weeks in the previous quarter.
The FCA said this was because it was currently handling a large volume of applications from consumer credit firms, which it became responsible for in 2014 when the Office of Fair Trading was dissolved.
The regulator said: "A small number of long-standing cases from the transfer of regulation from the OFT continue to be determined each quarter, resulting in breaches of service standard – these cases involve a high degree of complexity, interaction with other authorities and/or refusals."
damian.fantato@ft.com