FSA warns fund groups over outsourcing

Asset management firms outsourcing parts of their investment process may be abdicating their responsibility to the consumer, according to the FSA.

Ed Harley, head of the FSA's asset management supervision department, said it had found evidence of cases where gaps in the investment chain had caused consumer detriment. "We are concerned we are seeing a lot of outsourcing and we are looking at the contracts to see if they are actually working to reduce the responsibilities of the asset management industry," he said. "It is a very long value chain and that can lead to confusion. We are concerned there is no single party taking an overview of the whole process, which is particularly relevant to costs and charges." The regulator wa...