Gosling's Grouse: Why does the advice industry look to rules to replace values?

Ever since the dotcom crisis at the turn of the century, regulators have struggled with getting the right 'culture' into the industry, writes Lawrence Gosling.

First came TCF – Treating Customers Fairly – which was supposed to be embedded into the culture – that word again – of every advice business in the industry. The regulator's way of trying to achieve this was to get firms to document their TCF policy and demonstrate staff had been on TCF training and there was on-going monitoring. While everything about TCF is right, somehow having a policy on the issue seems a contradiction in terms and implies, to me at least, that the industry 'actively' does not treat customers fairly. The industry is once again grappling with the concept of cul...