Dear All,

As you are aware the Financial Services Authority has recently under gone major changes and has re-emerged as the Financial Conduct Authority. The FCA is specifically designed to police the non banking and investment side of selling general insurance. With this change there has been an increased concern over certain sectors of industry and the FCA have responded by promising a more hands on direct approach to regulation, which will include tougher controls. With this in mind, and due to the amount of internal resources available, it is felt that in order to maintain a fully compliant process the best route is to relinquish our Directly Authorised status in favour of becoming an Appointed Representative.

This will mean that whilst we can still offer our existing range of products from our existing suppliers, the responsibility of compliancy will fall to an external company. This will include the training and competence of all staff involved in selling and advising on insurance products (including warranty work), online statements of customer demands and needs and internal compliance auditing. The company we have chosen to use is ITC an industry recognised  firm with a wealth of experience in insurance compliancy and dealing with the regulator. James Nass from ITC will be contacting each individual concerned within the next 2 weeks to establish a training program, with an anticipated handover in quarter 4. Although, this is subject to the FCA change of status being implemented.

The change in regulation to the FCA seems a natural point to change our status to an Appointed Representative and allows us to concentrate our internal time and efforts on developing our core finance and insurance profitability and penetrations, whilst ensuring that compliance is maintained to a high standard by ITC.

If you have any questions at this point please contact me and I will be available to liaise and implement the hand over to ITC.

Kind Regards

Jason Lewis (07771 908968)

CC Odette Shocklidge