John Tiner, managing director of the FSA, said: "Introduction of mortgage and general insurance regulation involves the creation of two new regulatory regimes and the new division will have a pivotal role in delivering this. The challenge for the FSA is to provide an appropriate level of protection for consumers, which means that the regimes must be tailored to the risks and the wide variety of products in these markets. We also need to ensure that brokers and other firms benefit from the simplification in regulatory arrangements announced by the Treasury last December."
The new Division will launch on 2 April and will have three principal responsibilities: policy for regulation of the mortgage and general insurance sectors; authorisation of retail market firms from both sectors; and supervision of retail market advisory firms.
The new Division will collaborate closely with the FSA’s Insurance Firms Division, as that division will acquire responsibility for supervision of the newly-authorised wholesale insurance brokers.
The new division will be headed up by Sarah Wilson, who is currently Head of Mortgages and Financial Promotion in the FSA’s Conduct of Business Standards Division. She was previously Head of Policy in the FSA's Pension Review Division, and before that was Private Secretary to Howard Davies as Deputy Governor of Bank of England and then Chairman of the FSA.
