Like many brokers, I fully agree with the concept of one authority regulating insurance. However, the recent issues - the client money row, small commercial customers being classed as personal customers - set alarm bells ringing.
Add the proposal that a broker with an income of £1.1m will pay £11,000 for membership and one with an income of £900,000 will pay £1,200 and more alarm bells start ringing.
In fact, the expressions "cloud cuckoo land" and "don't have a clue" spring to mind.
Surely, looking at the recent broker failures, such as Ward Evans, where the insurers that lost out heavily took so long to realise there was a problem, it was naïve to assume that they would be willing to accept increased risks for client premiums.
Unfortunately, as in many areas of life, the people making the rules are not always in touch with the real issues at ground level and fail to understand how things work in practice, beyond textbooks and discussion forums.
Lastly, while I can agree with most of B Portwood's letter (29 May, Insurance Times), I would like to think that if they are GISC members, the 'before FSA' letter that they have been really sending out was a bit more detailed than the example shown.
A Hancock
Neil Readman Insurance
York
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