In Principle

The FSA’s priorities might not change year to year – a fair deal for consumers, stable and orderly markets - but the thinking on how to achieve them certainly does. The Business Plan for 2007/08 is based firmly on outgoing chief executive John Tiner’s philosophy of principles-based regulation, the “main strategic priority for the coming year,” he says. It calls for a three-pronged programme that will see sections of the handbook reworked, with the prospect of fewer rules, investment in the regulator’s people and in its information systems.