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The real difficulty is that the governance of the regulator is self perpetuating. After the current spate of debacles which have been ongoing for the last two years the chair should’ve resigned first followed quickly by the chief executive so that the new chair hopefully appointed with influence from outside the regulator could’ve appointed the new chief executive.

The only way to restore the confidence of the profession and that of the public affected by the SRA‘s mistakes would be to show a complete change of management at the top and a new direction in the culture of the SRA so succinctly described by the example given in these comments.

As it stands all that can be assumed is that the new chief executive is in the mould of the previous one and liable to make the same mistakes of preferring regulatory innovation to regulatory stability. Let’s hope not.

The regulator doesn’t need to appoint a chief executive to take it to the “next level“. What is needed is a a new chair and chief executive to apologise for the mistakes of the previous regime. And provide confidence that those mistakes of missing the obvious risks of an individual in charge of £50 million of client money with dodgy looking bank statements is not given more leeway than an otherwise honest firm which has not got its AML compliance documentation in order.

As mentioned below, until we regain confidence in the SRA not to be vindictive, this comment has to be an anonymous whilst the present in depth AML documentation survey is continuing.

Needless to say, I anonymously support the anonymous views of anonymous of 3.19 p.m.

Anonymously yours.