FSA chief exec to stand down

John Tiner, chief executive of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), has announced he will be stepping down this year after six years at the regulator, more than three of them as chief executive.

He will leave in July 2007, and plans to start a new role in the private sector in 2008. The regulator has set up a selection committee, chaired by FSA chairman Callum McCarthy, that hopes to appoint a successor by this summer.

At the FSA, Tiner is best known for leading the Tiner Review that reformed the insurance industry by radically improving the solvency regime for insurance companies. He also reorganised the FSA sector silos into three business units - retail markets, wholesale markets and regulatory services - and moved the regulator away from rules-based regulation to a principles-based approach.

Internationally, he chaired the Committee of European Securities Regulators’ Fin Committee - its group of financial reporting experts - and worked on solvency issues with the Committee of European Insurance and Occupational Pension Supervisors.

Tiner joined the FSA in April 2001 as managing director of the consumer, investment and insurance directorate. He became chief executive in September 2003, when the role was created by splitting the executive chairman role, held by his predecessor Sir Howard Davies, into chairman and chief executive positions.

Prior to the FSA, Tiner worked for accountants Arthur Andersen for 25 years, where he was a partner for 13 years. As head of the audit firm’s global financial services practice, he worked on banking supervision, developing early models of the risk-based approach now in use at the FSA and elsewhere.