Not having a go at you personallu BUT

Unfortunately Gary, your opinion is worthless until it is known fully how the FSA and FOS come down on this issue. If they hold the advisers who arranged aby structured plan even partly responsible for non disclosure when it would seem the FSA etc believe the brochures to have been "non compliant", then until the FSA say what SHOULD be in a brochure and it is compared to what is in your product brochure how can anyone in their right minds arrange anotehr structured product for a client? This is regulation by hindsight and small IFAs cannot afford unlike big firms who seem to keep phoneixing to be regulated in this way as the question is will the FSA allow a small IFA who fails as a result to even be deemed fit and proper or get fresh authorisation, while failures (including Clive Briault from the FSA who falls on a golden sword of £300k, John Tiner (the FSA Helmsan pore banking crash) and directors of failed networks), seem to just move on in the industry. If you say you'll never wotrk in the FS industry again if one of your products results in an IFA having a complaint upheld for your firms errors, then small IFAs might just get some confidence back! And from my words here I think one can safely say there are a lot of IFAs who believe the FSA have failed in their statutory objectives....

Posted by: For a reason

Keeping things in perspective

I do accept the point that the FSA has yet to provide a fully detailed report following its review and until that time it is not known the extent to which advisers are to be included in any actions. The FSA has confirmed however that it will be taking action against firms as a result of the review. It has also stated that the review was a hugely complex area covering many areas such as promotional literature, clarity of information, quality of advice as well as sales systems and controls, not simply non-disclosure of counterparty. My comments were made simply to highlight the fact that this is not another issue but merely the result of an existing and ongoing review. Since that review was started the industry has enjoyed somewhat of a rennaissance and I believe this is in part due to the increased transparency and disclosure, not to mention adviser understanding, now surrounding the industry. We should all know more by the end of this month and one would hope that this particular issue can then be put to bed.

Posted by: Gary Dale

FSA may not think this through

Lets use an example of the FSA unpholding a decision that the brochures should have been clear, fair and NOT misleading but they believe this to not have been the case. The adviser therefore is in a very difficult position. If the adviser believes they were clear to him/her and that they then explained them clearly to a client, then QED, if the FSA thinks they were flawed, then the adviser's opinion was flawed and ultimately the adviser could be seen as being joint and severlly liable for the failure. If the adviser issued and explained the relevant FSA guide on structured products, then will this be a get out of jail free card for the adviser? It is time the FSA either vet products of this type or at least when they decide something like this is flawed AFTEr the event, they explain what SHOULD realistically have been done as it is easy to be wise after the event...

Posted by: For a reason

gary dale has left the planet?

What a lot of tosh. Try lumping your silly marketing jargon at the thousands of innocent victims who have lost their money to the likes of Lehmans, NDFA, DRL, ARC and Keydata in your upwardly mobile structured product world.

Posted by: ripped off by ndfa