The Financial Services Authority has announced it plans to publish a consultation paper on platforms by the end of March.

In its Retail Conduct Risk Outlook, which was published this week, the FSA stated it was considering findings from research and planned to publish a paper within weeks.

In August 2011, a proposal was made to ban payments by product providers to platforms and said it would be ‘desirable’ to ban cash rebates to all consumers.

However, the FSA wanted more time to conduct further research into the issues and identify any unintended consequences.

The proposal to ban cash rebates was initially put forward by the FSA in consultation paper CP10/29 in November 2010.

The FSA said: “Platform models that rely on rebates from providers could allow product bias and conflicts of interest to remain in the market. Such models can also prevent access to funds that do not pay rebates and can hinder transparency of charges.

“When we have considered the findings from the research we plan to publish a consultation paper by the end of March 2012 setting out our proposals.”

Legal and General reported in its preliminary results today (14 March) that it was awaiting the final rules from the FSA with regards to developing its own platform.