The chairman of the Association of IFAs (AIFA), John Gummer, has called for a three year review of the FSA’s treating customers fairly initiative to determine what it has achieved.
Speaking at the AIFA annual dinner on Wednesday, Gummer said there was a “serious need” to question regulation and what the FSA has been doing to improve the industry in recent years.
Gummer also called for an improvement of the FSA’s relationship with Europe, saying the it can “learn lessons” from the European Union to create more sensible regulations.
“There is a serious need to question regulation and what it has achieved,” he said.
After calling for a three year review into TCF, Gummer also said disclosure requirements “need a full and proper review” to ensure they meet the customers’ best needs.
Gummer, a Tory MP, discussed the fact the UK often presses ahead with regulation the EU is still looking in to, leading to a doubling up of regulation. “This simply cannot continue,” he said.
He discussed previous regulatory relationships and said there must be less “gold plating”. As an example, Gummer used the Insurance Mediation Directive, a document that was originally five pages but, in the UK, was extended to 800 pages.
He said this was a clear example of “sensible regulation and gold-plated British bureaucratic regulation”.
However, Gummer did praise recent FSA initiatives, in particular the review of the funding structure for the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).
Earlier in the evening, FSA chief executive Hector Sants told those present the RDR should be seen as “an opportunity rather than a threat” and insisted the regulator does not have “an anti-IFA agenda”.
Sants also answered concerns over a “perceived lack of accountability in our (the FSA’s) actions” and said the regulator would not be “diverted” from its efforts to implement principles-based regulation by recent market turbulence.
Source: IFAonline.co.uk |
