From the Ed: brace yourself…

First, the past: the FSCS used to split regulated firms into five ‘classes', each of which was divided into two streams, provider and intermediation. When a firm collapsed, triggering consumer claims for compensation, it would be the remaining firms in the relevant stream that would have to pay for them, up to a pre-determined annual threshold. Once the threshold was breached, the burden would pass to firms in the other stream within that class. To use Keydata as an extremely unpopular example, firms in the investment (that's the class) intermediation (sub-class) stream had to pay ...