Compliance Monitor

With the passing of the completion deadline for the Financial Services Action Plan (FSAP) on 1 July 2005, the European Commission has now turned its attention to member states’ implementation of the constituent Directives. The new focus..

Authorised firms have to understand and action those requirements imposed, in many cases, not just by the FSA but by numerous other supervisory bodies. This means identifying the regulators, their rules and interpreting how they impact on the business. The firm then has to define and implement the necessary changes to its processes to accommodate the regulations and monitor compliance. A number of factors make this process very complicated, writes Gary Holden of BCS Croup, factors which, he suggests, use of robust and agile information technology can render tractable.

In the case of Seymour v Ockwell, [2005] EWHC 1137 the High Court considered how liability for retail product misselling should be assigned between provider and distributor. Adam Samuel analyses its thinking.

FSA has published the first of a projected series of consultation papers containing proposals to shorten and simplify its Handbook. But will the changes necessarily be for the best? Emma Radmore of Denton Wilde Sapte looks at the reasons behind the new proposals, and what the future holds for the structure of FSA’s rules.

On 19 July 2005, the Financial Services Authority published the findings of its Enforcement Process Review. Whilst the review has steered away from a wholesale reshaping of the existing enforcement process there are some important changes proposed to the way that it is implemented, write Ailbhe Edgar and Neil Mirchandani of Lovells’ Contentious Regulatory Practice. At the core of the proposed changes is the perceived need to ensure greater fairness in the process. Whether the proposals will challenge perceptions that in enforcement the odds are stacked against the firm, only time will tell. This will depend, they argue, on the extent to which the FSA adopts the review’s recommendations on publication of critical information regarding case experience.

Supervision and enforcement staff have embarked on a nationwide series of visits to general insurance brokers in order to reinforce the regulatory perimeter. 500 firms in Birmingham, Derby, Leicester and Nottingham have already been inspected,..

Pleased with the response to its Key Facts document model for mortgages and general insurance, the FSA now proposes a Quick Guide to retail investment products. The stand alone document, which it is envisaged will be no longer than two pages, would..

“[S]ome firms are still asking what, in practical terms, we are expecting them to do,” the FSA remarks in its recent paper “Treating customers fairly [TCP] – building on progress”. Previously, in July 2004, it proposed..

Failure to complete systems programming work, started before August 2001 when Bear Stearns International Limited (BSIL) began trading in contracts for differences (CFDs) on equities, meant that the firm omitted to report its CFDs transactions to the..

A decision in July 2002 by the chief executive and group finance director of Mytravel not to announce the discovery of £24.3 million in prior year unaccounted for exposures, in breach of Listing Rule 9.2(c), has cost the firm a regulatory fine..

2.2 million households with an endowment-linked mortgage – 82% of the total - face an average forecast shortfall of £7,200 according to research commissioned by the FSA, although they will not necessarily all have grounds for a misselling..

Mortgage lenders and intermediaries frequently fail to provide consumers with obligatory disclosure documentation according to the findings of a mystery shopping exercise conducted on behalf of the FSA in April and May this year. 82 assessments were..

Two former directors of AIT Group, the AIM-listed software company, have been found guilty of criminal market abuse. On 18 August Carl Rigby ex-chief executive, was convicted under section 397(l)(c) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000..

‘Red’ Riding-Hood was a confident chap. A senior manager, who had made a lot of money in the financial forest, he always adopted a light touch approach to compliance. This latter failing aside, Red was savvy – after all, he’d..