Informed Choice executive director Nick Bamford spoke today at the Westminster and City Industry Forum on the Financial Advice Market Review.
Also speaking at the forum were Harriett Baldwin MP, Economic Secretary to the Treasury and Tracey McDermott, Acting Chief Executive, FCA.
The conference follows the recent publication of the Financial Advice Market Review (FAMR), the recommendations within which could change the retail financial services landscape dramatically in the future.
Within this presentation, Nick called for sweeping reforms to financial services regulation.
He used his speech to present a potted history of financial services regulation, highlight the £1.135bn cost to the consumer of regulating financial services this year, and suggest five solutions for ensuring the cost of regulation is value for money in the future.
Nick called on the government to reduce the scale of the Financial Conduct Authority, raise FSCS funding in future through a product levy, force the Financial Ombudsman Service to publish the qualification standards of its arbitrators, hand over regulation of retail financial services to a new self-regulating professional body, and entirely abolish Retail Mediation Activity Returns.
He said that 28 years of abject regulatory failure should not be tolerated by anyone, not least the consumer who is paying for a bloated, expensive, ineffective and mushrooming regulatory environment.
Nick’s slides are available to view here.
Do you think that the cost of regulation outweighs its value?
What steps would you take to reduce the cost of financial services regulation or improve its value to the consumer?
