FSA launches client asset consultation

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has launched a new consultation regarding proposed changes to its client asset rules.

It is the result of work done by the body since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and aims to ensure clients have confidence the personal wealth and assets they have invested are safe should a firm become insolvent.

Issues such as increasing reporting to clients and restricting the amount of client money deposits that can be held in client bank accounts within a group to 20 per cent are among those that have been raised in the consultation.

Director of prudential policy at the FSA Paul Sharma said that while the paper has come from the ’extensive work’ done since Lehman Brothers collapsed, it goes ’far wider’ than the failure of that business.

’We are keen to learn the lessons of the recent crisis and this paper is the first of many that we will publish on the subject of client money and assets,’ he remarked.

The body, which is independent and non-governmental, lists maintaining consumer protection and market confidence as two of its statutory objectives.ADNFCR-2318-ID-19696486-ADNFCR