April 2007

FSA sets out future of regulation

This press release draws attention to various material issued on 23 April 2007, at an FSA conference on More Principles-Based Regulation. This includes a 28-page paper entitled "Principles-based Regulation - Focusing on the Outcomes that Matter", and a new suite of pages on the subject in the small firms part of the FSA website. The material does not herald any significant new developments, in that the FSA have been talking for some time about the move to a more principles-based approach. The main purpose appears to be to reinforce the message that the change is beginning to happen for real, and to provide some examples to relate the theory to actual practice. The small firms pages for example contain a couple of specific examples (one relates to supervision and monitoring of financial advisers, the other to a complaints matter) drawn from actual casework of how FSA would expect firms to deal with particular issues taking a principles-based approach.