The Financial Conduct Authority, the UK market regulator, has moved to reassure asset managers and financial advisers over new European Union rules that could redesignate £125 billion of standard UK retail funds as “complex investment products”.

Katharine King, a technical specialist in savings and distribution at the FCA, suggested yesterday that the UK regulator, which will have responsibility for enforcing the EU rules from 2017, would look sympathetically upon the way they are applied in practice.