Turner: FSA's intrusive approach risks "disproportionate" costs
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FSA chairman Adair Turner (pictured) says that the FSA’s shift to a more intrusive regulatory approach risks restricting consumer choice and imposing disproportionate regulatory costs on firms.
Speaking today at the 2010 British Bankers’ Association conference in London, Turner called for an open debate about the balance needed between the regulation and supervision of firms, consumer responsibility, consumer capability and the role of the state in financial services.
He said: “We need to strike a balance and to get that balance right, we need to debate it openly and explicitly with the industry, with the press, with the politicians, with society.
“And in establishing the new Consumer Protection and Markets Authority we should, I believe, use the opportunity to make debates about that balance more explicit and more open.”
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Readers' comments (8)
Robert Donaldson | 13 Jul 2010 5:09 pm
It is OK saying such but it never happens. Beat the advisor is the game that they play and the consumer has no responsiblity for their actions.
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Exasperated me | 13 Jul 2010 5:22 pm
As the saying goes "talk is cheap".
If the CPMA is going to be balanced, assuming of course that EU laws don't make it obsolete, then why doesn't Lord Turner put a halt on all the feverish activity?
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Anonymous | 13 Jul 2010 5:28 pm
He said: “We need to strike a balance and to get that balance right, we need to debate it openly and explicitly with the industry, with the press, with the politicians, with society."
Ignoring those annoying little IFAs of course.
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Anonymous | 13 Jul 2010 6:42 pm
Why does he want a debate NOW? Could he not have one when the FSA was meddling about, decimating the advisers and hurting the industry! It needed direction then and regulations need to be looked at balanced and rolled back!
Has he ever consulted the advisers? and not the Directors of firms,etc.
Yes, a debate is over due! Let us have it. Meanwhile put RDR and other regulations on hold!
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Julian Stevens | 14 Jul 2010 8:28 am
To reply to Anonymous' post of yesterday at 6.42 p.m. (why anonymous?), I have a feeling that the reason the FSA is putting its foot down harder than ever on the regulatory gas pedal is to build its case for maximising the number of people who'll be offered jobs with the new CPMA. "Look at all this important work we're doing to 'improve' the industry. If the CPMA is to be effective, it can't possibly do without us."
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SP | 14 Jul 2010 9:40 am
Turner is also credited with saying -
"The FSA needs to be aware there are severe limits to our abilities, our judgements on what is in consumers' interests could be faulty and almost all regulation brings unintended consequence,"
Does this include the RDR Lord Turner?
I've spent the past 26 years advising my clients and the FSA think they know what is in their best interests.
Who is best placed to judge I ask?
26 years without 1 single upheld complaint and now struggling (in my mid-50's) to find the 70 - 100 hours per CII paper to qualify as ''competent''.
If Lord Turner truly believes what he has stated (and why wouldn't he), then the Retail Distribution Review itself is in much need of a review, if not complete abandonment.
Yet a many times failed FSA continue bulldozing through it's last white elephant and the ''unintended consequences'' referred to by Lord Turner are fewer main-stream advisers (like me) and more clients (like mine) without access to affordable financial guidance.
Now that's a great customer outcome don't you think?
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Norman English | 14 Jul 2010 9:48 am
At last sombody who talks common scence, In reallity however the IFA will continue to have over regulation which is now impacting on many of my clients who can't afford fees.
At present I subsidise these client from RDR 2012 they will have to be dropped and they will lose out.
Consumer protection, I think not, time the FSA had a rethink over what will provide the middle to lower net worth clients value for money and access to advice. Bottom line is that many clients just won't pay fees.
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Julian Stevens | 14 Jul 2010 11:39 am
And let us not forget that the RDR is based on a massively inaccurate Cost:Benefit Analysis (obviously the one the FSA wanted and probably specified so as to justify its launch).
If you're going to make grand utterances about disproportionate costs, Lord Turner, then why aren't you proposing a wholesale review of the RDR?
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