FCA confirms bans on payments to platforms and cash rebates

The FCA has published its policy statement and final rules which confirm that it will ban (i) payments from product providers to platforms, and (ii) cash rebates of product charges by product providers to consumers, in respect of sales of retail investment products.  The policy is broadly in line with the proposals in CP12/12 and comes just over three years since reforms to the regulation of platforms were first proposed.  The FCA has made some important adjustments to the new rules, notably by bringing execution-only sales within the scope of both bans (not just the ban on payments from product providers to platforms as previously proposed).  It seems that the RDR was only the beginning of reform in the retail distribution market.  Our briefing is available here.