The FCA has said it received more than 140 responses to the wide-ranging interim findings of its asset management market study.
The report, released last November, spanned more than 200 pages and nine annexes, and took a critical stance on active fund managers.
Many fund firms pushed back against the findings in their responses, the deadline for which was February 20. But there was little consensus over which of the watchdog’s proposals to implement.
As part of a wider submission, The New City Initiative, representing boutique fund managers, said that the suggested introduction of independent boards for open-ended funds “risks complicating fund managers’ set-up, and establishing just another layer of bureaucracy”. Old Mutual Global Investors, by contrast, said it backed the plan and highlighted the benefits of Ireland’s use of such boards.
The number of responses to the study is well in excess of the amount typically received by the regulator, even for high-profile topics.
Its October 2015 paper on changes to its rule book as a result of pension freedoms, for example, received around 85 non-confidential responses. But other market studies have attracted more attention in the past.
A July 2015 consultation paper on ways to improve the cash-savings market, which followed on from a market study on the subject, attracted more than 180 responses.
