Member Article

Belmayne enlists MP in David and Goliath fight with FCA

Dronfield-based financial planners, Belmayne, are taking their campaign for fairer industry regulation to Westminster, appealing for the help of local MP, Lee Rowley.

Belmayne’s partners held a Zoom meeting with Mr Rowley to highlight the danger regulatory burden and unpredictable costs pose to the independent firm’s future.

Mr Rowley, who worked previously in financial services, set out a plan of action to help draw attention to the plight of firms like Belmayne. It included writing to the industry regulators and the National Audit Office expressing concern about the actions of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and raising the issue with the Treasury Select Committee.

David Bashforth, a partner at Belmayne, said: “Honest, respectable financial planners are being unfairly penalised by the regulatory system for the actions of an unscrupulous few and the FCA is complicit in this mess. We feel our concerns are being ignored and this will have a direct impact on our clients. Our job is to help real, ordinary people prepare for retirement, but we will be unable to continue doing so if our running costs are not kept in check.

“The current regulatory system is broken, yet there is no one to hold the FCA to account. It refuses to consider real, workable alternatives to its funding model for the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), which unfairly penalises well run companies, particularly the very smallest. We are hoping that with Mr Rowley’s backing, we can widen discussions about the situation we find ourselves in and the human impact the inevitable loss of local financial advisers will have on communities like Dronfield.”

Belmayne is a member of LinkedIn lobbying group, Financial Planners United, which is pushing for a review of the FSCS funding model. A levy on members was introduced at the beginning of this year, hitting the firm with an unexpected £2,000 bill, on top of a 300% increase in the cost of professional indemnity insurance and a further 76% increase in FSCS and FCA charges in August.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Nina Sorby .