The FCA has today published a report which appears to give the insurance sector - including the professional indemnity market - a clean bill of health.

The regulator’s final report of its Wholesale Insurance Brokers market study, which was launched in November 2017 to assess how competition was working in the sector, failed to find significant fault with the market that would require intervention.

The FCA said it had “not found evidence of significant levels of harm that merit the introduction of intrusive remedies.”

“This report is, therefore, not an interim report but a final report.”

But the regulator did highlight some “areas of concern” which it said had “scope for improvement”.

These included:

• firms’ management of conflicts of interest;

• the information firms disclose to clients; and

• contractual agreements between brokers and insurers which, in a small number of cases, have the potential to limit competition.

The FCA says it will work with firms to address the concerns it found in these areas.

The regulator also vowed to continue to monitor the market as part of its normal supervision function to assess developments arising from the impact of EU withdrawal, possible further consolidation in the industry and as a consequence of any changes in business models.

The FCAs findings were drawn from multiple pieces of analysis including 73 brokers’ and 49 underwriters’ responses to a questionnaire looking at market features, including conflicts of interest management, market shares and entry/exit.

Christopher Woolard, FCA executive director of strategy and competition, said: “This was a significant and in-depth analysis of a sizeable and complex market to determine whether clients were at risk of harm.

“Encouragingly, we found no evidence that they were but we found some areas with scope for improvement and we will work with the industry to ensure these are addressed.

“We would like to thank the firms and industry groups who participated in the study.”