FSA confirms budget to rise to £578m for 2012/13
The Financial Services Authority has published its Business Plan for 2012/13, revealing a significant increase in its budget.
The plan highlights the fact that regulatory funding is set to increase by 15 per cent over the next year from £500m to £578m.
Some £32.5m of this budget is going towards the implementation of the ‘twin peaks’ model in April. This was forecast initially to cost £10.9m.
The money would also go towards modernising the FSA’s IT infrastructure before it becomes the Financial Conduct Authority in 2013.
The FSA said the majority of costs would fall on larger firms rather than smaller ones.
Hector Sants, chief executive of the FSA, said firms outside of the top 1000 had seen their costs fall from 31 per cent to 16 per cent of the FSA’s budget over the last four years.
Similarly, the percentage of budget funded by the top 10 firms had increased from 17 per cent to 31 per cent.
He also confirmed that the annual FSA fee for small firms would remain at £1,000, a figure reported several weeks ago.
He said: “The FSA recognises that given the economic circumstances the industry faces, it is not realistic that the cost of regulation continues to rise at this rate in the long term and therefore the new authorities will be very focused on controlling costs.”
Regarding platforms, the report confirmed a consultation paper would be published in the first quarter of 2012 and a policy statement would follow later in the year.
The FSA is keen to ban cash rebates from product providers to investors and product provider payments to platforms but declared last autumn it would need to carry out further research on the topic.