FoFA among top 20 global regulatory nightmares
The Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reform is one of the 20 most challenging pieces of regulation globally, according to a survey of 600 compliance professionals across the world.
The ‘Cost of compliance 2015’ report by Thomson Reuters asked compliance professionals from financial services firms all over the world to name the regulation that poses the greatest challenge for the coming year.
FoFA was listed along major regulatory changes such as the Basel III rules that will require banks to hold more capital, or the Volcker Rule in the United States that limits the bank’s relationships with hedge funds and private equity funds to prevent them from making speculative investments.
The US Dodd-Frank Act, a major regulatory reform following the GFC that has been compared to FoFA, is also listed among the most difficult regulatory challenges.
However, the UK’s equivalent piece of legislation, the Retail Distribution Review (RDR) was not part of the list.
The research also found that compliance officers are experiencing “regulatory fatigue and overload in the face of snowballing regulations.”
As many as 70% of the firms are expecting regulators to publish “more” regulatory information in the next year and 28% expect that the increase will be “significantly more.”
More than a third of the firms surveyed spend at least a whole day every week tracking and analysing regulatory change.
“Global regulatory change is creating the biggest challenge due to inconsistency, overlap and short time frames,” the report said.
“Understanding regulators’ expectations and requirements and being able to interpret and apply them is as great a challenge as keeping abreast of the changes.”
As a consequence, regulatory risk and costs are both expected to rise in 2015, with 68% expecting the compliance budget to be slightly or significantly higher than today in 12 months’ time.
[via Financial Standard]
