The Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the United Kingdom has long been regarded as one of the most successful regulator in the world. It pioneered the idea of principle based regulation and was one of the first regulators in promoting the importance of performance measurements for financial regulations. FSA has been for the longest time the model of many emerging & developed markets’ supervision. Many also argued that it is practical and necessary to allow one “Central” regulator to have all the power in monitoring and supervising the market.
However, all that changed with the fall of Northern Rock, one of the largest financial services organizations. Further trouble with Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds had some questioning whether a principle based regulation system actually works.
1- What went wrong?
2- Principle based or Rule based? Is rule based going to be the model from now on?