UK life insurers and advisers are facing a much more aggressive regulator that is setting an agenda to “fix the industry”, according to local risk profiling expert Paul Resnik.

“The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is completely different from the Australian regulator,” Mr Resnik, the CEO of FinaMetrica, told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

He says the UK regulator is fixing problems which have affected the industry over recent years.

Mr Resnik has just completed a seven-week tour of the UK talking to banks and life insurance companies as well as running presentations to more than 700 advisers on ways of measuring their clients’ risk tolerance.

He says the UK regulator wants to fix the mis-selling problems.

The acting head of the FSA’s conduct business unit Margaret Cole last week attacked the banking industry for mis-selling payment protection insurance products.

“I am not in the business of bank bashing, but I do have to say if you look at the evidence in relation to payment protection insurance, which has been the most recent saga, it was really the big retail banks who were the major players,” she said.

Ms Cole says mis-selling has cost the UK consumer more than £15 billion ($22.3 billion) during the past 20 years and this doesn’t include £9 billion ($13.4 billion) from payment protection insurance schemes.

Mr Resnik says the FSA is going to hit the British life insurance industry hard and will present “the regulatory vision of the future”.

“The industry is going to have to find new ways of selling life insurance,” he said. “Advisers will have to have a higher duty of care.”

He says this tougher approach could flow to Australia, as regulators now confer globally at regular meetings.

As an example, Mr Resnik points to the fact that India banned sales commissions for advisers in 2009, Hong Kong will ban them in 2013 and Australia and New Zealand are also producing new standards for advisers.

“In the UK there is a real sense of panic,” he said. “If the adviser doesn’t do the right thing, they are gone.”