The Financial Conduct Authority should not set any time-limits for complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service; so says the United Kingdom's Financial Advice Market Review, which has just been published.

The FCA promised to look into the idea in the summer after a very vocal campaign from the Association of Professional Financial Advisers and complaints from many financial advisors in a private capacity about excessive liabilities for the advice business.

The idea of a 'statute of limitations' for bad advice (this time with discussion centring around a fixed period of 15 years after the time of the misconduct) is not the only recent regulatory controversy that relates to time limits. The FCA is also consulting interested parties about its proposal to time-bar complaints about payment protection insurance - one of its most noticeable anti-consumer initiatives in recent times. Its views are relevant to FOS complaints as the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 gives it the power to set the ombudsman services' rules.

The 83-page review suggests the closure of a long-standing loophole in the UK's compliance with the European Union's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, namely that Parliament should amend its definition of the phrase 'regulated advice' in the existing Regulated Activities Order "so that regulated advice is based upon a personal recommendation." HM Treasury is expected to consult interested parties on the subject shortly.

Regulators at the Financial Conduct Authority have plenty of work cut out for them in the report. They are expected to come up with new guidelines to support firms that help consumers make their own investment decisions without personal recommendations. They should come up with rules for 'streamlined advice.' They should think about modifying the time limits for various people to attain appropriate qualifications as dictated by their existing 'training and competence' sourcebook. They should consult interested parties about some cross-subsidisation rules. They should spend money on a new 'advice unit' to help firms develop "automated advice models" - a term that seems to indicate robo-advice.

The report found that the much-discussed 'advice gap' tends to apply to poorer investors in pensions rather than high-net-worth individuals. Some respondents defined that gap solely in relation to people who wanted advice but could not get it at a price they were willing or able to pay - a definition that by no means excludes HNWs. Some thought that cost was not the only off-putting factor and that people should think of 'an advice gap' as the difference between the number of people who currently seek advice and the number of those who would seek advice if a cheaper and less intensive process were to exist. Others concentrated on the undoubted fact that individuals might not necessarily be aware of the fact that they need advice. Once again, robo-advice seems to rear its head. The report notes: "FAMR wants to support the development of mass market automated advice models that have the potential to bridge the advice gap, whether they are fully automated, hybrid (i.e. with human interaction in the process) or tools to bring efficiencies to the face-to-face advice process."

Project Innovate is a department that the FCA set up some time ago to encourage innovation in finance. It informs innovative businesses about the regulatory implications of their business models and always tries to keep things competitive. The authors of the report are enthusiastic about its efficacy and want the FCA to extend it, not least in the field of automated advice - a subject that obviously has a glorious future in the UK.

HM Treasury, in this report, seems to have developed an ambtion to re-brand itself as 'HMT' in the same way that Greenwich Mean Time is known as GMT. Its reasons for this remain obscure. The report-writers hope that 'HMT' will somehow persuade the industry to make a 'pensions dashboard' available to consumers by 2019 and to take advice from the representatives of consumers as it does so. They also murmur darkly about 'legislative support' for this initiative, suggesting that it is going to be compulsory in the end.