FSA

The "menu" for pricing financial services products published by the FSA today could prove to be a good marketing tool for IFAs if consumers start using it post-depolarisation, says the Association of IFAs.

The FSA says it will not impose new rules on property investment schemes, although it will support moves to ensure IFAs' understanding of such schemes is improved on behalf of consumers.

Independent Financial Advisers should soon spend more time with their clients and less time ploughing through regulatory consultations if the FSA's plans to shorten documents from April 2004 go ahead.

After almost three years of consultation, reform of the financial services training and competence regime is no further forward.

Independent Financial Advisers have NOTHING to gain except further regulation and added costs if latest FSA interpretation of the EU Directive comes into effect, warns the Association of IFAs.

Berkeley Jacobs, part of the 80m euro Dublin-listed IFG Group, has been hit with a £175,000 regulatory fine for misleading advertising and failures in the advice it gave clients releasing cash early from their pensions.

Mortgage lenders have been told in a letter from the FSA there is little evidence of abuse of self-certification mortgage applicants as firms have good controls to prevent against fraud.

The government has announced the establishment of a national Serious Organised Crime Agency, which will include a focus on money laundering activities.

Figures from the Children's Mutual suggest providers and industry associations may have jumped the gun in celebrating the government's proposed 1.5% price cap in the new product rules.

SCOTTISH NATIONAL Party MP Alex Salmond told the House of Commons yesterday the Financial Services Authority's new solvency regime may act as a "poison pill" for mutually-owned assurers such as Standard Life, says the Scotsman .