On the Road to Regulation

Pavilion Row is very excited by the Legal Services Board (LSB) announcement last week of their proposals to regulate the area of will-writing and estate administration.

There are two key parts of the proposal

• The recommendation that will-writing and estate administration activities be added to the list of reserved activities ( reserved activities are activities that can only be offered for a fee by regulated organisations)
• Improvement of existing legal services regulation that currently applies to the majority of providers, e.g. solicitors, where the LSB’s view is that “currently it is not working well for consumers.”

Importantly their recommendations apply to all providers rather than just those with professional titles and are centred on a vision of consumers being best served by “competition between diverse providers within a well regulated market place”.

However, regulation is not going to happen overnight.

There are a number of consultations to go through before the LSB produce their final report in the Winter. And the LSB have stated that reservation should not take full effect until there are;

• Approved regulators in place
• Enough authorised providers to undertake the work

In our view it could be at least two years before this happens.

Pavilion Row is for regulation. We believe it provides a level playing field for all providers which will in return improve competition, innovation and the service delivered to customers. This can only be positive!