The financial services industry faces "tougher and bolder" regulation, under plans for the forthcoming Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
One of the successors to the Financial Services Authority (FSA), it will come into being by the end of 2012.

The FCA will oversee the way 27,000 firms, including banks, do business with customers and with each other. It aims to prevent any more of the mis-selling that cost customers billions of pounds in the past two decades.

Margaret Cole of the FSA said the new body would be more proactive and interventionist than the FSA had been in the past. "We will take action when a consumer detriment is building up, and not wait for it to crystallise first," she told the BBC.

New approach

In its 52-page consultation document on the powers of the new body, the FSA points out that past mis-selling scandals over private pensions, mortgage endowment polices, and split-capital investment trusts have cost customers about...Read more HERE on this story