OFT website
The Office of Fair Trading will close for business today with some of its responsibilities transferring to the Financial Conduct Authority.
From tomorrow the Competition and Markets Authority will come into existence to take over from the OFT.
The CMA will become the UK's lead competition and consumer body, bringing together the existing competition and certain consumer protection functions of the OFT and the Competition Commission. Other responsibilities will transfer to the FCA and HRMC.
The FCA will take over the regulation of the consumer credit market from the OfT from tomorrow, which will affect up to 50,000 consumer credit firms.
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The FCA said in its annual business plan: "We will have a direct impact on significantly higher numbers of consumers, ensuring that they are treated fairly when obtaining credit or debt advice.
"We will apply our rules and actions proportionately to raise standards in this sector."
The FCA will create more jobs to cope with the extra demands and it will also take on OFT staff.
There are a large number of authorisation applications to be dealt with and a number of OFT investigations are being carried forward, the regulator reported.
