My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register of the House, particularly those relating to the non-life insurance industry.
At Second Reading I commented on the vital nature of access to justice. It is of central importance that those who are not in a position to get legal or other assistance towards making valid claims can do so via no-win no-fee arrangements with professional firms and at reasonable cost. The very excellent claims management regulation review already referred to by noble Lords, led by Carol Brady, is very firm on this point. I remind the House that her executive summary says:
“The overwhelming majority of stakeholders, including the banking and insurance industries which have been hardest hit by CMC misconduct, argued that there is a legitimate need for CMCs and that the Government should not seek to regulate them out of existence”.
The central role of the FCA is clear. Its regulation must be proportionate and helpful.
Regulators in financial services generally charge the cost of their regulation back to those whom they regulate. So one way of assessing how heavily you are regulated in any jurisdiction, and the burden, is simply to compare the relative costs of the regulation. The British Insurance Brokers’ Association, using London School of Economics numbers, supplied me with some data earlier in the week. It reports that the UK—for insurance broking, which is just one of the very large number of areas that the FCA regulates—is more than twice as expensive as Ireland, Hong Kong and Bermuda, and that that multiple is bigger again for France and Germany.
It is not just the cost or weight but the fact that, in the insurance space at least, you cannot ring up the FCA and get help in interpreting what for our industry is 1,000 pages of regulations on a situation-specific basis. It simply will not answer the question but will refer you to the regulation and say, “Go and get some advice from somebody else if you need it”. That is
completely different from how regulators in other jurisdictions around the world operate, as being helpful to those whom they seek to regulate helps a jurisdiction become competitive internationally. This amendment seeks to ensure that there is a cultural change for the FCA where the CMCs are concerned. I fear that an unhelpful regulator would act as a deterrent to the formation of new small CMCs. It is vital that new CMCs can be born to maintain that access to justice that I started with, just as it is vital that a proportionate regulator deals with unsatisfactory CMC behaviour.
I would point out one more thing—that if you get regulation wrong, the FCA can reach through the corporate veil and get at the regulated persons connected with the firm concerned. They can be fined and sanctioned generally in all sorts of ways. If a regulator is unhelpful it is quite a disincentive for individuals who might be thinking of forming a small charitable CMC to help people with certain things, and that disincentive would impede access to justice. I am concerned, accordingly, that good firms providing access to justice might be handicapped or worse, and yet the bad firms may be able to cope with the regulatory burden. In short, this is a vital role for the FCA. This amendment is aimed at ensuring a cultural change in the FCA, and helping CMCs to interpret what I am sure will be complicated and long regulations. I beg to move.
5.30 pm