MPs and FSA at loggerheads over delay to advisers' commission ban

Sunday 06 November 2011 01:00 GMT
Comments

A fresh war of words has broken out between the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the Treasury Select Committee.

In its report into the upcoming banning of commission payments to advisers, and more general reform of the financial advice industry – called the Retail Distribution Review (RDR) – the select committee, headed by Tory Andrew Tyrie (pictured), took the opportunity to lambast the FSA. The committee's anger centred on an earlier response of the FSA to its call to delay implementation of the RDR for a year to allow financial advisers time to retrain and adapt to the ban.

"The FSA made its initial reply to our report by means of an embargoed response rejecting the idea of a one-year delay before our report had even been published. We deprecated the FSA's action in making such a response. It gave the impression that no adequate consideration had been given to the arguments for the delay we recommended," the Treasury Select Committtee report said.

The FSA has always maintained that it will carry on with RDR regardless of the committee's call for a delay. The select committee said that the FSA's response highlighted yet again "concerns about its accountability", and that it "very much regretted" that the City watchdog had chosen to ignore its call so quickly.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in