The U.K.’s financial services regulator has scrapped a move that would have meant that as well as seeing the watchdog push the responsibility for certifying the suitability of key people other than “senior managers” onto the firms themselves, would also have seen these individuals being kept off the regulator’s Financial Services Register—or even removed in some cases.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) had thought that the move would save itself money, give firms more leeway about how they identified key staff for certification, and be a winning formula, but an FCA spokesperson has admitted that “the industry thinks otherwise.”

Jeffrey Davidson commented that he believes that the FCA’s “shift toward individual accountability and corporate self-regulation will have a dramatic impact on how and by exactly whom conduct is monitored.”

“The FCA must clarify precisely what values constitute an ‘important individual,’ and how it plans on robustly demarcating who is worthy of inclusion in the Register,” says Jeffrey. “There is no room for confusion regarding which individuals should be assessed internally and which by the FCA in lieu of them being included in the Register.”

Read Jeffrey’s comments in Compliance Week