Just a note for brokers and agents feeling a little harassed by all the compliance pressure: your counterparts in Britain have been told to get their new financial services licence applications in on time if they want to continue trading.

The quaintly named “high street firms division” of the Financial Services Authority said the overall objective of the new rules is to design a risk-based regulatory regime “which is sensitive to the risk in the market for insurance products”. Sounds just like APRA too…