The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has today published its feedback statement summarising the responses to its Product Intervention discussion paper (DP), published on 25 January 2011.
The DP proposed a new direction for retail financial services regulation, moving away from an approach largely focused on point-of-sale, to one that actively regulates all aspects of the product life cycle, including the design, development and management of products.
The feedback statement published today summarises the feedback received so far; considers the place of product intervention in relation to other relevant projects; and outlines the action already being taken and the next steps.
The FSA received a wide range of constructive responses from consumer organisations, individual consumers, industry associations and individual firms. It also ran a series of six roundtable events with representatives of different industry sectors and consumer organisations to debate the issues arising from the DP.
The DP and feedback statement are an important part of the wider debate about the future of financial regulation in the UK and the regulatory philosophy to be adopted by the Financial Conduct Authority. The FSA will shortly publish a paper offering more detail on this.
Background
- The Product Intervention feedback statement is available.
- The Product Intervention discussion paper was published in January 2011 and is available on this website.
- 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 for consumers; and fighting financial crime.
