This report is the product of a working group that we set up in the summer of 2002 to look at the impact that CP121 and the Sandler Review would have on the structure of the retail financial services industry in the UK.  Is there any hope for the IFAs? Who will be the new players in the market?  And is there any more mileage in voluntarism when it comes to making provision for retirement and old age? Or (as Frank Field suggests) is compulsion the only way?

Around a couple of dozen people participated in the working group - some anonymously and all in a personal capacity - and all of them have made an important contribution to this paper.  It has been written by Stuart Fowler (whose previous book No monkey business was an extremely well-received dissection of the UK retail savings industry).