The mortgage intermediary trade body said the data had at best “lacked confidence, at worst it appears underhand”.
It added that it had listened to the FSA's arguments in its consultation but has now discovered that between the consultation and the policy statement that the number of firms and their income levels had decreased significantly.
A statement from AMI said: “Whilst the FSA are right and many small firms will only pay the minimum levy of £1k, firms may be in for a big shock.
“With the 10% increase in FSA fees for brokers, we also have higher Money Advice Service costs and, for those carrying insurance permissions, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme levy to cover PPI will make a huge difference. Total regulatory costs could rise by more than 40%.”
The statement added that the latest FSA fees consultation had left a harsh taste of disappointment.
Robert Sinclair, director at AMI, said: “The policy statement explained the changes in a short paragraph but there has been no dialogue or openness via the process. The PR ignores it totally.
“I am concerned that the newly divided FSA risks losing industry respect. In the creation of a new statutory base, the new FCA is meant to be a new beast.
“With fewer firms and pressure on incomes the new regulatory framework must reduce its costs not continue to load their expenses on to responsible firms."
A spokesman from the FSA responded: “We make it clear in the Consultation Paper that all such measure data is estimated and that differences between final data can have a material impact on final fee rates.
“Fees that individual firms pay will depend on whether their levels of income have fallen so a firm which has seen a fall in their income in 2011 could actually pay less in fees than last year.
“Our estimate for this fee-block was that the total income would be broadly the same as the previous year. We accept that we over-estimated.
“Worth noting that for the A.19 fee-block (general insurance advisers) we under-estimated their income level which means that the final rate per unit of income here is 13.4% less than last year’s whereas the year-on-year Annual Funding Review allocated is only down 6.4%
“So it can clearly work the opposite way.
“We believe that overall it is the industry’s preference that we use the most recent actual data for the final rates. The alternative would be to use data that is over a year out of date and would not be sensitive to the income movements of individual firms – where it counts.”
