A Happy New Year to all readers of our blog – this section of our website is becoming a clear favourite of visitors to AT8, so we will strive to continue to add our views and perspective over the coming year.
So, here I am looking out of my window, on a cold (getting colder by the minute!) Wednesday morning – waiting for the snow to arrive, according to the Met Office.
I always struggle on the first real day back from an extremely enjoyable but slightly over-indulgent Christmas and New Year break, having to re-engage the grey matter and fire up the thought processes to kick start another year.
2007 was an event-packed year, seeing the Regulator generating significant market discussion, a credit squeeze, a bank in trouble and a mortgage market in slowdown.
What’s in store for 2008?
Well, from our perspective there’s a lot:
The FSA has already slipped the Retail Distribution Review timetable, but the debates surrounding this topic will rattle on until the next output from Canary Wharf;
The Mortgage market retreat seems to be continuing, with new borrowing down and house price values falling – it’ll be interesting to see if the interest rate reductions will stall the decline;
As we’ve discussed in previous blogs, 2008 is going to be a fascinating year for the solution suppliers – a year where each vendor will undoubtably re-assess their market position and whether the strategy of pushing into other competitive areas is sustainable – we’ve already seen towards the end of 2007 some u-turns – I suspect further changes are afoot and maybe some further consolidation is inevitable.
Finally, with the FSA’s drive toward Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) gaining significant momentum, practitioners and alike will be looking for solutions and processes to enable compliance without significantly increasing the cost of advice – something that will require further automation of the advice process.
More next week.
