Alan Lakey: How regulation has failed
"Readers — particularly those with a long memory — will hold their own opinion as to the success of regulation"
ALAN LAKEY
Financial services regulation is approaching its 36th birthday and it is reasonable to assume that most of today’s advisers have never worked in a non-regulated world.
Much has been written and philosophised about the benefits, or otherwise, of regulation, but what is clear is that the world is a very different place from that of April 1988.
The basic logic behind the imposition of regulation was to kick out the idiots, conmen and rip-off artists. Professor Jim Gower, the architect of the 1986 Financial Services Act, stated in his ‘Review of Investor Protection’ that “consumers should not be made fools of but should be allowed to make fools of themselves”.
