Fees for financial advisers

Yes, following the success of the instalments plan introduced last year, a new instalments plan with significantly improved terms is available for 2007/08.. An industry working group reviewed proposals from interested credit providers and following careful consideration selected Premium Credit Limited as their preferred supplier. Details of the instalment plan will be provided in your invoices.

No. Firms can make their own arrangements directly through other credit providers if they wish to do so. We are aware that other providers may wish to provide such a service to individual firms. Firms are not restricted to use the facility offered by Premium Credit Limited, and are free to research other opportunities available in the market.

Yes, credit contracts with PCL are fixed term agreements and do not 'roll-over' into the following fee period.

If you have any questions about the facility offered by Premium Credit please contact them directly on 01372 744525 or by email. You can also contact your Trade Association for more information.

We will not comment further on instalments, other than to confirm the information above and information in previous press releases on instalments, and to provide contact details for Premium Credit Limited. If you have a question about the calculation of your invoice, call our Firm Contact Centre on 0845 606 9966 on 020 7066 1888 or by email.

Firms who are not exempt from the FOS levy will be asked to report Fee Tariff Data for FOS I008 fee-block or FOS I009 (FOS equivalent of FSA fee-block A.12 or A.13). Some firms may have advisers who do not deal with eligible complainants (these will not be relevant approved persons), such persons should be excluded from the data reported under I008. We define eligible complainants under DISP 2.4 of our Handbook.

As with last year, invoices will be sent out to IFAs during July, with payment due within 30 days. Firms were aware of this timetable in advance and therefore they have had time to organise funds to pay their fees.

A small number of invoices may be sent out after July. Our normal payment terms are stated on the invoice and where we have not previously invoiced them, firms should pay within 30 days of the date of the invoice.

Firms that are experiencing or anticipating problems paying their fees should speak to their usual supervisory contact.

If a firm does not pay the full amount of the fee by the due date given on its invoice, then that firm will be liable for an additional fee. The administrative processes for ensuring timely payment of fees and levies for the FSA, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) and the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) have now been aligned.

Late or non-payment of regulatory fees and levies will incur:

• an administrative fee of £250; plus
• if the fee was not paid in full before the end of the due date, interest on any unpaid part of the fee is payable at the rate of 5% a year, above the Bank of England's repo rate at the time, accruing on a daily basis from the date on which the amount concerned became due.

The term of payment for invoices from the FSA is 30 days from the date of the invoice.

If firm's apply to pay their fees and levies via Premium Credit Limited, after the invoice due date, they will be liable for the late payment penalties.

We will be writing to all firms who have not paid their fees to advise that we have not received their payment and warning them they may be liable for additional costs. If payment is not subsequently received, the firm will receive a letter confirming that it is subject to surcharges. If the firm still does not pay, we will refer the matter for Enforcement action.

The principles of good regulation require us to use our resources in the most efficient and economic way. We achieve this by having a cut-off date for calculating the fees that are payable by firms. A later date would impact on our work calculating fee tariff rates, which would have a knock-on effect on our invoicing programme. However, this does mean that firms who recruit advisers after 31 December do not receive any further invoices. To alter that date – or move to a changing date – would have a significant impact on our workload and consequently on the costs of collecting fees. Any increase in costs would have to be passed on to firms.