The FCA has published a speech given by Tracey McDermott (acting Chief Executive, FCA) entitled “The regulation of advice – recommendations post FAMR (the Financial Advice Market Review)”.

In her speech it is noted that advice is one of the seven priority areas mentioned in the FCA’s annual business plan.  In addition, Mrs McDermott mentions that along with HM Treasury the FCA has set itself a series of milestones to ensure that it retains focus on the delivery of the FAMR objectives:

• to support progress over the next 12 months, members of the FCA FAMR expert advisory panel will form a financial advice working group with members of the FCA Consumer, Practitioner and Smaller Business Practitioner Panel;
• the FCA will develop advice market indicators to monitor the development of the advice market and measure affordability, accessibility and quality of advice and guidance. These will be tracked on an annual basis and published on the FCA website; and
• the FCA and HM Treasury will report jointly to the Economic Secretary and FCA board in 12 months to update on progress made towards implementation and in 2019 both organisations will conduct a review of the outcomes from FAMR.

In addition Mrs McDermott states that the FCA’s advice unit that will support the development of automated advice tools will be open from May. The unit will be open to firms of all sizes, linking up with the FCA’s work on Porject Innovate. The FCA will initially be giving eligible firms feedback on how their advice models can meet regulatory requirements and expectations. Also, later this year the FCA will be developing a set of tools and resources that will be publicly available to all firms. This might include a set of standardised testing scenarios for firms to use to gauge the effectiveness of their models.

View The regulation of advice – recommendations post FAMR, 20 April 2016