The Financial Conduct Authority is to ban firms with platform and fund management arms effectively giving away platform services for free, in return for investment into its in-house funds.
The new rules, which are understood to affect Axa Wealth and Seven Investment Management, are intended to clamp down on what the FCA called a "cross-subsidy" of platform charges. "Product costs should not be used to cross-subsidise the platform charge," the regulator said in its platform paper, released this morning. "If a platform service provider is also a fund manager, we would not expect the platform to be labelled as ‘free' if the consumer invests in funds operated by that manager. "In much the same way as our adviser charging rules do not allow cross-subsidisation of advice ...
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