In a speech at the regulator’s annual public meeting, Turner said inadequate regulations agreed by central banks and regulators across the world, combined with the “intellectual delusions” of many “apparent experts”, had conspired to cause the financial crisis.
He said deficiencies in the FSA’s approach had played a part, but added that, of all the institutions guilty of pre-crisis failings, the FSA had been the most prepared to admit to them.
From April next year, the FSA will split into two regulatory bodies: the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
And Turner said this was an opportunity for UK regulators to wipe the slate clean.
“Creating the new organisations will be an opportunity to put behind us the damaged reputation which the FSA suffered as a result of pre-crisis failings,” he said.
“A fair assessment of those failings would reflect a wider context – the inadequacy of regulations agreed by central banks and regulators across the world: and the intellectual delusions which left too many apparent experts blind to the impending disaster.
“But deficiencies in the FSA’s own approach played a part within that wider context – and the FSA has been more willing than any other institution to admit those deficiencies, to learn from them, and commit to and deliver the radical changes needed to put them right.”
Andrew Bailey and Martin Wheatley, heads of the PRA and FCA respectively, will report to Turner for the final nine months of the FSA’s existence, following FSA chief executive Hector Sants’s departure in June.
