Why things will never be the same for regulation

Last year's promised changes to regulation - which have long been going on in the background - gripped financial services publicly.

Pre-crisis light-touch rule-making is dead (for IFAs at least), and the break up of the FSA is now well underway.

Those in the industry who cheered news of the regulator's demise may have realised in 2011 their jubilation was premature.

This year brought a vision of the more intrusive and pre-emptive regulation of financial advice which will be the trademark of the Financial Conduct Authority, as the FSA began flexing the new powers of its successor.

In 2011 the FSA broke a number of records in the fines it used to punish firms it found transgressing the rules.

For the first time it proposed banning the promotion of a product - traded life settlements - to retail investors, using the strongest language possible to condemn the investment as "toxic".

In doing it so sent the traded life settlement sector into free fall and, tellingly, argued that was a price worth paying. It is the start of things to come.

Over at the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and the Financial Ombudsman, the story is the same.

Lawyers for the FSCS are chasing advisers who recommended Keydata for return of the compensation it paid out, two years after its collapse. The FOS published its first provisional - not final - decision against an adviser who recommended Arch Cru.

Harder, deeper, less trusting regulation has been the hallmark of 2011.

But as the FCA moves into final position next year, advisers can expect it yet has further to go.