The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has said it does not recognise consumer group Fairer Finance’s assessment of its pure protection market study as a ‘massive missed opportunity’.
This is according to David Geale, FCA permanent executive director for payments and digital finance, and managing director of the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) (pictured), who was responding to a question raised by Health & Protection at the FCA’s annual public meeting press conference this afternoon.
Health & Protection asked whether Fairer Finance’s description of FCA’s pure protection market study final report, published last month, as a ‘massive missed opportunity’ to address poor value in over 50s plans, the potential to address claims data, consumer understanding of critical illness and loaded premiums due to deference to the regulator’s secondary growth objective, was a fair assessment.
Extensive piece of work
In response, Geale said: “We don’t recognise that. We’ve carried out an extensive piece of work in terms of the market study looking at the market as a whole.
“We haven’t found particularly a depth of issues. What we’ve found is some things we think can be dealt with through working with the industry rather than taking perhaps more draconian steps, and that’s where we feel it’s pitched appropriately.”
Appropriate package of measures
Geale added that the regulator wants to work together with the industry to make sure value is delivered in the appropriate way.
“So I wouldn’t characterise it as a missed opportunity, but what we will do is make sure that the steps that we proposed to follow through on, and we can of course come back and do more work if needed,” he continued.
“At this stage, we feel it’s an appropriate package of measures that will deliver change in the market.”
