Brokers fears that insurers would rewrite agency agreements to avoid risk transfer looked set to be realised with R&SA being the first to admit that it was to put its agreements under review
Other insurers kept their cards close to their chests.
The FSA's amendments to brokers' minimum PI requirements raised concerns in the industry.
Brokers feared that the requirements (of £700,000 per claim or the higher of £1m or 10% of annual income in the aggregate) were too low.
They argued that smaller firms could have multi-million pound claims that would not be fully met by the PI cover.
This would leave other brokers to bear the cost through the Financial Services Compen-sation Scheme, they argued.
Authorisation application fees also proved controversial. Despite the insertion of a new fee band for smaller firms in the FSA's final document, brokers were disappointed that the regulator had not gone far enough.
There were concerns that the small number of bands, and the large jump in fees between each band would disproportionately affect the smaller firms and could lead to job losses.
