Followers of natural history may be familiar with the K-T boundary. Around 65.5m years ago some 75% of all species on earth disappeared. Amongst them were some of the largest and most highly specialised (not to mention successful) creatures ever to have existed - the dinosaurs. They had evolved over 160 million years to fill every conceivable biological niche and by comparison, our own antecedents were tiny creatures scurrying about in the dark and doing their best to avoid becoming someone else’s dinner!

Source: flickr - desdeaqui

The cause of the extinction? Well, current evidence suggests that a huge asteroid - so large that the top of it was still in outer space when the bottom struck the earth - was responsible. It was travelling at roughly 20 times the speed of a rifle bullet and released more than 1 billion times the energy of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Enough to ruin your whole day.

Since then our tiny ancestors have evolved into every type of mammal we see today from the dormouse to the blue whale (and of course, us) to fill once again, every biological niche.

And the relevance of all this? Well, two things:

1. The UK Financial Services Industry may well come to look upon 31^st December 2012 as its own K-T Boundary Extinction Level Event. A good number of highly specialised firms (large and small) are not going to survive the impact of the FSA’s Retail Distribution Review. They have evolved to thrive in the sales/commission driven world of the past 30 years and they lack the adaptability to survive in the new environment that is coming.
2. Initially this will have a negative impact - first on the number of people qualified and authorised to give financial advice to the public and second on that very public who are faced with a more bewildering than ever array of financial decisions to make. The need for good quality advice has never been greater.

However, the K-T extinction event shows that where nature creates a vacuum something new will evolve to fill the gap. In this case, the FSA seems intent to wipe the slate clean. Many are taking this personally but it does begin to look and feel like an act of nature! There are already a number of great firms out there ready to take on the challenge. For those firms, their current and future clients, the future seems brighter than ever. For the rest? Maybe a footnote in the financial palaeontologist’s yearbook?