14th June 2010

Come in number 4, your time is up!!

News hitting the wires is indicating that the FSA is to fall under the control of the Bank of England with a separate Consumer Protection Agency set up to regulate IFAs.

Chancellor George Osborne is set to reveal the restructure in his first Mansion House speech tomorrow, the Chancellor is also set to announce the separation of the FSA's consumer protection activities into a new body called the Consumer Protection Agency, as proposed by the Conservative Party before the election. Enforcement activities are also set to be hived off to create a new Economic Crime Agency. The CPA would oversee regulation of IFAs.

So what lessons will have been learned and put into practice when commissioning the CPA. Many IFAs will have seen regulation pass from NASDIM to FIMBRA to PIA and then to the FSA, four regulators in some 25 years now to become 5 in 25 years.

The first lesson to be learned is that there should be a consideration to costs. The second is that it should be proportionate to the risk and a third is that it should seek to adhere to the principle of the Regulators Compliance Code.

Panacea's own members have been vocal about how they'd like to see Mr Osborne tackle regulation and the FSA. Find out what some of them had to say in a recent discussion on our LinkedIn Group.

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