Director of the FSA’s high street firms division Sarah Wilson has defended the organisation’s decision not to make qualifications mandatory for insurance brokers.
Wilson said that the FSA intended to capitalise on the expertise of the newly-created Financial Services Skills Council and would place responsibility for maintaining a list of exams appropriate for the industry in its hands.
The FSA has chosen not to require specific qualifications amongst brokers because the risk to consumers was not sufficiently high to warrant it, Wilson said. “It is absolutely not to belittle the contribution that they
are likely to make,” she said.
Wilson said that the FSA had instead chosen to leave the decision of what qualifications staff required up to the senior management of each business. “Exams are not ever the whole part of the story,” she said.
