Gathering of the regulators points the way ahead

I say good fortune because it is fairly rare for all three regulators to appear together. However it was an event to be heartily recommended and hopefully repeated in the future.

Credit for this coup goes to the Association of Professional Compliance Consultants, an organisation I helped to found about 20 years ago and which continues to go from strength to strength. By working with the regulators, the APCC is able to act as a conduit for disseminating information on regulatory trends to its members and, through them, their adviser clients. It also has a vital role in developing the professionalism of compliance professionals throughout the UK.

A key element of the APCC is helping compliance consultants serve their financial adviser clients more effectively, so that they are able to meet their regulatory obligations with the minimum of fuss.

My particular concerns revolved around the unfair funding of the FSCS

It is often said that at its heart compliance is just good business practice, and this is something I witness on a daily basis. It is clear to me that advisers who put compliance and good customer outcomes at the forefront of the financial advice process are steadily increasing their profitability and value, as well as ensuring peace of mind for individual advisers and their clients.

Through its close contact with the regulators, the APCC is also able to feed back the concerns of regulated firms, and this recent meeting was an excellent example of the value of this two-way communication.

Speakers from FSCS, Fos and the FCA delivered a really helpful presentation, after which attendees had the opportunity to quiz them on areas of mutual interest.

My particular concerns revolved around the unfair funding of the FSCS, the dangers to Fos of the new pension freedoms, and how Fos and the FCA will deal with matters such as today’s ‘insistent clients’.

These insistent clients are the very same people who, when faced with lower incomes in a few years’ time, will blame the financial advisers, who – at their insistence – helped them access their pension funds, which they then spent.

While none of the speakers had a magic wand with which to solve these important issues, the very fact that they could be openly debated was an extremely positive sign for the future.

Quantum may or may not be the right description for a group of regulators, but let us hope it will not be too long before we make a quantum leap in the way regulation in general works, and how the FSCS in particular is funded.