Financial services need strong regulator

The Financial Services Practitioner Panel, using its statutory voice to represent the industry’s concerns to the Financial Services Authority, has often been critical of the regulator, and its concerns about the FSA’s emphasis on conduct of business at the expense of prudential issues were vindicated by recent events. In this extract from a speech by Nick Prettejohn, FSPP chairman, to the FSA’s annual public meeting recently, he says that the FSA must justify higher costs and improve “weak” cost benefit analysis if it is to win the approval of industry.

No-one will be surprised when I say that the Financial Services Practitioner Panel has had a full year. We have engaged in a number of strenuous debates around some pretty fundamental issues.