The UK's Financial Conduct Authority wants to open a new directory to help consumers and firms check the status and history of people who work in financial services. Additional reporting rules are in the offing.

The directory will include everyone who holds a position in senior management that requires approval from the FCA and everyone whose job require his firm to certify that he is 'fit and proper,' to use the age-old rulebook phrase. This includes those in consumer-facing roles, such as mortgage and investment advisers.

As with many FCA initatives, the regulator's press release simultaneously portrays the directory as something for the future and as something that exists already. Most of the time, however, it uses the future tense.

The information in the directory is, or will be, designed to provide information that the reader finds easy to use and understand. Consumers will be able to search by location to find local advisors.

Consultative paper 18/19 states that the new public register and user interface ought to:

• make information public about "additional individuals carrying out a wider range of roles." The FCA says that this mysterious phrase includes people of whom the FCA does not 'approve;' these being financial advisors, traders, portfolio managers, additional directors and others; and
• contain information about these people and the senior managers of whom the FCA "continues to approve" in a way that is more accessible and user-friendly than other ways; and
• let users find information about these people at a single public location.

All this, of course, entails more burdensome reporting to the FCA on the part of the firms themselves. The consultative paper also asks for public comments about the virtues (or otherwise) of the Financial Services Register.