Financial Services Tribunal: for justice, for regulatory clarity (Pt 3)

• A Financial Services Tribunal with jurisdiction to produce authoritative decisions on the effect of regulation would help eliminate regulatory uncertainty, reduce compliance costs and maintain the UK’s reputation as one of the best-regulated markets in the world.

Financial regulation, like the politics which underpins it, began a transformation in 2008. Richard Samuel, barrister at 3 Hare Court, in the latest of his trilogy of articles in the Capital Markets Law Journal , characterises the change in this way. Before that date, financial regulators investigated irregularities apparent in the market and penalised transgressions where they found harm. Since 2008, regulators have not waited for irregularities or harm; they now require absolute compliance with their rules and fine firms who fall short. An increasingly burdensome series of regulations and rule-books have therefore become all the more onerous for firms because of the unforgiving way in which they are now policed. Post-2008 politics has sustained