The Chairman of the Financial Services Consumer Panel, John Howard, has today written to the FSA to question their most recent assessment of the benefits of regulation in its decision to scrap the menu of costs and initial disclosure document (IDD), which financial advisers are required to provide consumers.

In his letter, John Howard says:

"… in this case the FSA seems to have measured only selected benefits of regulation and only those directly measurable in economic terms. It has then used these results as the reason for dropping some key consumer protections, in the form of the price menu and IDD.

This decision causes us to question the FSA's assessment of the consumer benefits of regulation and we urge the FSA to take broader aspects of consumer benefit into account when making decisions about costs versus benefits in future."

Full text of letter [PDF]

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