FCA's lofty proposals could push firms across tightrope

New rules could cause problems

It is right that asset management is highly regulated, but proposed FCA rules could be asking firms to perform a balancing act as daring as that documented in the film Man on Wire.

Philippe Petit's successful death-defying tightrope walk between New York's Twin Towers in 1974 was something few would have comprehended as even remotely possible. The feat was immortalised in the aforementioned 2008 documentary, and now asset managers might have to adopt Petit's can-do attitude for the financial industry's potential follow-up. The FCA consultation paper's title, A new Consumer Duty, is fairly innocuous; its contents, though, are anything but. It is hard to argue against the logic of trying to better protect consumers - and maybe nobody should - but before new rul...