Responding to the rulebook

If you can remember as far back as the first regulatory rulebooks under the Financial Services Act 1986, much of what the regulators issued was in the form of high level principle. Unfortunately, many people in the industry were uncomfortable with this or even abused it. They refused in many cases to do the job of interpretation. This led to more prescription but also to the case for a professional body, to guide the industry towards appropriate professional standards. During the intense debates about the professional body in the 1990s, it seemed that that most of the participants wer...