Lakey: FCA delay ends RDR postponement hopes

Hopes the FSA will delay the introduction of the RDR have been quashed with the announcement one of its replacement entities, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), will not come into being until 2013, IFA Alan Lakey says.

The FSA's restructure into the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) was due to take place in 2012 but, in its recent business plan, it said this could be pushed back to "early 2013".

The RDR will be introduced on 1 January 2013.

"The fact the FCA will not be established until after RDR removes a potential avenue where we might have circumvented current thinking," Lakey, the founder of lobby group Adviser Alliance, says.

"There was potential for the FCA to look at RDR and see it is skewed and maybe rethink and postpone it, but now that potential has gone."

If the FCA were established prior to RDR, incoming head Martin Wheatley could have taken a fresh look at its proposals, Lakey says.

He adds, because the new body did not draw up RDR, it carries "no baggage" and would therefore not carry any risk of "losing face" by delaying its implementation.

"Wheatley might have looked at the FSA's research and seen it as skewed.

"He may have said: 'in the interests of my position we should maybe postpone RDR and re-think it so advisers do not lose out'."

Despite the setback, Lakey - one of the industry's most vocal campaigners against RDR - says the date change does not mark the death-knell for the anti-RDR camp.

He hopes the Treasury Select Committee's report to the government, expected in the next few weeks, will be a "damning indictment" of the FSA's analysis.