ABSTRACT
The financial services industry has become increasingly important to the economic life of the United Kingdom, at both a macro-economic and an individual level. In the past decade the industry has been undergoing revolutionary changes, not least in the regulatory systems that have been developed (Page 1987; Moran 1988). Moran has argued that the new regulatory systems created by the Financial Services Act 1986, usually described as ‘self-regulatory’, are hybrids, being neither pure market nor bureaucratic-administrative regulation. In effect, public powers and duties are delegated to private interests to fulfil, subject to certain conditions and monitoring imposed by government. An integral part of any regulatory system will be mechanisms for dispute resolution; those that have grown up in the financial services industry, and are the subject of this chapter, show the same hybrid character. In particular, public sector devices, such as ombudsmen, have been imported into the private sphere in a prime example of what Poggi (1978) has referred to as the ‘compenetration’ of the public and private spheres which characterizes modern society. One of the most interesting theoretical issues is under what social conditions such transference is raised as a possibility and the conditions under which such a transfer will be successful.
