Speaking today at the FSA's Enforcement and Law conference in London, Andrew Procter, FSA's Director of Enforcement, said: "As many of you will know, we have announced an "end to end" review of the enforcement process. Why? Simply because it takes too long to complete some of our cases.
"The end to end review of the enforcement process will include a review of the decision making process. The decision making process is a long one. Even without delay or requests for an extension of time, under the process we have designed it takes five months or more to move from the end of an investigation to a Decision Notice. We must ask if that is too long.
"There are some very valuable components in the current decision making process. The separation of investigator from decision-maker is important. The scrutiny of the FSA's Regulatory Decisions Committee (RDC) is valuable and does improve the quality of our decision making. The right of an affected party to make representations is a necessity.
"But, is it a process that delivers timely results? We have therefore commenced a review of the decision making process and, in particular, those parts of it established as matters of FSA policy. We want to determine whether the decision making process can be shortened without a loss of fairness to affected parties or a loss of respect for the process itself."
Background
- The full speech is available here.
- The review of the enforcement process is under way and the FSA intend to complete it in the first quarter of 2004.
- The FSA regulates the financial services industry and has four objectives under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000: maintaining market confidence; promoting public understanding of the financial system; securing the appropriate degree of protection of consumers; and fighting financial crime.
- The FSA aims to maintain efficient, orderly and clean financial markets and help retail consumers achieve a fair deal.
