The New Regulatory Framework: The Financial Services Authority

It is difficult to find a single, major cause for the creation of the new regulatory framework in the UK, but several factors have contributed to the reform, that have spanned a period of approximately four-years. The creation of complex financial intermediaries had caused the distinctions that had previously characterized the financial sector to become blurred. Banks did not appear to be ‘special’ anymore or at least not as special, as before, now being in competition, both on the provision and on the gathering of funds, with other financial institutions, and entering themselves into other fields of financial intermediation, while the regulatory structure remained fragmented, and still very much reliant on self-regulation.