The Financial Services Authority's new approach to regulation

The new single regulator for financial services, which acquires its main powers under the new Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, brings together nine regulatory and supervisory bodies operating under a broad range of existing statutory or contractual arrangements across all financial services sectors. In January 2000, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) published a policy report on its new approach to regulation, aimed at focusing its regulatory effort on the risks to its statutory objectives. The proposals rely to a significant extent upon a new risk assessment process, outlined in the paper, which is intended to identify those areas of greatest risk. The paper considers how the new approach is likely to be implemented and looks at the issues involved in applying a risk‐based approach consistently across the industry sectors. The paper includes a review of the supervisory arrangements adopted by four of the predecessor regulators.