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The Financial Services Authority is also known as the FSA. It is the organisation that regulates the sale of all investments, pensions, mortgages and general insurance in the UK.
At the moment the FSA does not regulate the non-mortgage loans market but in the future this is likely to change.
The FSA is currently promoting a new initiative called "Treating Customers Fairly" or TCF. It's aim it to ensure that all customers are treated by financial services companies, in a manner that is fair and generally has their best interests at heart. Unusually for the FSA, the initiative has a principles-based approach, meaning that in addition to the guidelines included in the programme, there is also an implied underlying responsibilty on companies to operate in a manner that abides by the general objectives of the programme - a slightly more vague and subjective approach than previous FSA initiatives, but one which is aimed at removing the tendency for some companies to try and identify loopholes in any FSA requirement and move to exploit them. The TCF initiative started in 2006 and is still ongoing.
The FSA believe that principles-based approaches will allow companies more flexibility in deciding how they should deliver fair treatment to potential customers in a way that is more applicable to the individual business. Instead of a set of prescriptive rules and guidelines, the approach should give firms better choices in the way they compete in the marketplace and allow them to innovate more easily in product design, the delivery of better customer service, and in giving more value for money.
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