Financial adviser Martin Bamford CFP^CM has developed an action group to campaign for fairer Financial Services Compensation Scheme funding.

The ‘FSCS Levy Action Group’ has designated 25 April as a day of action and wants advisers to email Mark Hoban, financial secretary to the Treasury, with their concerns on that day.

Wednesday 25 April has been chosen as it is the day when many adviser firms will be paying their interim levies with some £60m required in total.

The campaign was started after advisers were sent an interim levy of £60m from the FSCS in order to cover firms such as MF Global and Keydata. This is alongside an annual levy of £33m which is payable in July.

Mr Bamford, managing director of Guildford-based Informed Choice, paid out £10,000 for his proportion of the levy and many firms would have paid out more.

As a result he is campaigning for three things:

• Better categorisation of firms within the FSCS funding system. Fund managers should pay for the failure of fund managers. Stockbrokers should pay for failed stockbrokers.
• Greater awareness of the funding of the compensation scheme, advisers and their clients pay for the FSCS so the public should know about this.
• Bring representatives from the FSA, FSCS and IFA sector before Parliament to find out the impact of FSCS funding on small IFA businesses.

Mr Bamford said: “The FSCS is an important piece of the jigsaw when it comes to providing consumer confidence. The way it is structured and funded is flawed, so we will continue pushing for a reform of the system. Our preferred outcome is a pre-funded FSCS with an explicit product levy based on the risk profile of the product/fund being sold.”

For more information visit: http://www.fscslevyactiongroup.co.uk/