Firms should “think carefully” about the implementation of upcoming European regulation designed to protect investors, the FCA’s acting head of savings and investments has said.
In a speech to an FCA conference last week, Maggie Craig said pragmatism would be “important” when it came to implementing the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II in 2017.
She said: “We will be thinking carefully about what kind of rulebook should exist by the time 2017 comes around.
“A strict copy-out of the new MiFID standards could create a regime that, in many areas, makes incredibly fine distinctions between different instruments, services and clients and the precise details of the requirements placed upon them.”
She asked firms “not to jump to the conclusion that any deviations from a pure copy-out approach to MiFID is necessarily a bad idea”.
Adviser view
David Gibson, director of Londonderry-based Gibson Financial Planning, said: “If there is something else coming down the tracks, it would be very good if the FCA could tell advisers what to expect.”
