Effective quality assurance in the personal investment industry: part 1 ‐ an impossible task?

This paper is a response to a consultative document by the Personal Investment Authority (PIA), the UK financial services industry regulator. The PIA exists, not because the industry is a monopoly or concerned with health or safety, but because of the unsatisfactory quality it has provided to its customers. The approach of the paper is to examine if the quality management principles developed in manufacturing during past years could be useful in addressing this problem. The paper appears in two parts; the second part proposes a different type of regulatory system.