Compliance Monitor

February’s fine for Trigon Pensions Limited marked the beginning of the FSA’s assault on financial advice for 2007. The regulator seemed to spend much of last year expressing concerns about the quality of financial advice received by consumers, notably in its Treating Customers Fairly Papers. Now, it seems to have opened the hunting season for advisers. Adam Samuel who reported the TCF material for Compliance Monitor would far rather put right some of the problems faced by IFAs and portfolio managers before they turn into complaints and enforcement problems. Here is his account of where the major problems are likely to show up in the coming year.

Cliff Knuckey may be contacted on tel: +44 (0) 20 7291 5700; email: cknuckey@managingrisc.com

HM Treasury is consulting on new Money Laundering Regulations to implement the Third Money Laundering Directive. They are longer than the current version and will have significant impact on firms that are not used to thorough standards of anti-money laundering compliance. But will they make a big difference to those that are? Emma Radmore of Denton Wilde Sapte looks at the main changes.

From 1 November 2007, all European financial services firms that carry on investment business must comply with new rules on conflicts of interest. These rules, introduced by the EU’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), have greater depth and reach than some firms may realise. Aaron Caplan and Adrian Jackson of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP examine the implications of this new regime and set out a practical approach to compliance with it.

Trigon, an independent pension consultancy has paid a £10,500 fine for not effectively overseeing TFS, its sole appointed representative, which offers independent financial advice. During a thematic visit in January 2006, the FSA’s Small..

Midlands-based, new and used car dealership Cathedral Motor Company Limited has been censured by the FSA over poor payment protection insurance (PPI) sales standards. During the period 14 January 2005 and 23 May 2006 business managers at the..

Although Regency Investment Services only sold 37 income drawdown policies, accounting for less that 5% of its total turnover in the period January 2003 to March 2006, the risk to individuals’ financial welfare from missales is reflected by..

Customer functions CF21 to CF27 are to be combined into one generic CF30 function from 1 November 2007. The same activities will still fall under the approved persons regime but firms will no longer be required to submit a Form E and a Form A..

FSA’s campaign to raise selling standards amongst payment protection insurance (PPI) providers has now caught Capital One, part of the Capital One Financial Corporation, which serves almost 50 million account holders in the US, Canada and the..

The ‘RU64’ rule, which requires firms to explain why a personal pension is more suitable for the customer than a stakeholder product will remain in force, the FSA has confirmed. The industry had argued that the rule put a price cap on..

Nationwide, the UK’s largest building society, with over 11 million customers, has been fined £980,000 for information security breaches after a laptop containing customer details was stolen from an employee’s home. In determining..

Much as the FSA would dearly like to remove the training and competence sourcebook (TC) in its entirety, as it declares in the recently issued CP 07/4,- and already intends to do, effectively, for wholesale market participants who deal only with..