FSA Policy Statement: Distribution of Retail Investments: RDR Adviser Charging and Solvency II Disclosures

Financial Services Commission (FSA), capital market regulator in UK publishes Policy Statement – Distribution of retail investments – RDR Adviser Charging and Solvency II disclosures, based on feedback to Consultation Paper 11/25 and final Adviser Charging rules – here FSA outlines the proposals.

This Policy statement will be of interest to firms advising on retail investment products and to product providers offering these products. The Solvency II changes to the COBS product disclosure rules will be of interest primarily to insurers.

The new rules will come into effect as follows:
• rules on the facilitation of payment of adviser and consultancy charges – on 31 December 2012, at the same time as the main RDR Adviser Charging rules; and
• the rule on reporting investment amounts where payment of adviser charges or consultancy charges is being facilitated – this will apply to firms’ first full reporting period after 31 December 2012.

The Solvency II disclosure rules are ‘near final’, as they include new Glossary definitions to be made with the main Solvency II rules.
They will be made at the same time as the main Solvency II rules, which we expect to be at the end of this year; we currently expect them to come into effect on 1 January 2014.
 

In November 2011 FSA published Consultation Paper (CP) 11/251, which covered:
• issues on facilitating the payment of adviser and consultancy charges under the Retail Distribution Review (RDR) rules;
• whether product providers should, when reporting data under our data requirements such as Product Sales Data (PSD), report investment amounts on a basis net or gross of any adviser or consultancy charges being facilitated; and
• minor changes to the disclosure requirements in Chapters 13 to 16 of the Conduct of Business sourcebook (COBS) to implement Solvency II2 Directive (Solvency II) requirements.