FSA chief hits out at structured products

Financial Services Authority (FSA) chairman Callum McCarthy has warned of the dangers of banks selling complicated financial products to customers who do not fully understand them.

Speaking at a British Bankers Association conference in London this week, he said the FSA could not prevent such activity, but warned that it would use its powers of "rewarding those firms which behave responsibly" and of "making it increasingly costly for those who do not". He said the FSA would place "a new emphasis" on the problem. "We have at present a customer who is too often not equipped to understand financial products, and whose judgement is therefore unreliable. And we have a sales