I'm in the game of clear, concise and effective communication and, as client-facing advisers, so are you. The FSA, on the other hand, continues to struggle with its unwritten obligation to use plain English.
This week's FSA consultation paper on data collection was a case in point. When the FSA writes about its plans for firms to disaggregate their revenue streams in RMAR forms, one wonders why it doesn't simply state it wants firms to break down their sources of income. When I later asked Peter Smith, the FSA's head of investment policy and a thoroughly nice, knowledgeable chap, to explain why he wanted firms to go into so much detail, he said: "We could have specified data sets more granular than those we are consulting on...
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