In a recent speech to Cass Business School in London, Ken Clarke, the Conservative Leadership candidate, attacked the Financial Services Authority, questioning whether the regulator has its costs under control. He said that there was an ‘increasing hostility in the city to the staggeringly expensive’ cost the authority creates for the industry. He believed that the costs and implications of regulation have been more apparent in the past couple of years, which has intensified feelings in the financial industry, and that the regulator’s agenda is being driven by lobbying, rather than serving consumer interests.
Mr Clarke also spoke about the current pensions crisis, calling the governments’ policies ‘irresponsible and short sighted’. He said that the first area he would look at for tax relief would be pensions and saving rather than cuts in direct personal taxation, trying to reverse Gordon Brown’s ‘£5 billion a year raid on pensions’.
Our view
We have two employees that drain the resources of , that take up too much of our time and offer no help in making our business grow: One is our Professional Indemnity Insurance which costs a small fortune and the other 'employee' is the Financial Services Authoity and their yearly fees. The FSA has a difficult job to do but some within its offices are 'jobs worths' who do not understand the rules and just ask you to refer to the rulebook without giving a view themselves. Others can be brilliant and very helpful at times.