The UK's financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority, has published a paper setting out its assessment of the overall costs and benefits for the country’s financial services industry of implementing the European Union’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive. According to the FSA, MiFID could generate around £200 million per year in quantifiable ongoing benefits, mainly from reductions in compliance and transaction costs. But the quantified one-off cost of implementing MiFID could be between £870 million and £1 billion, with ongoing costs of around an extra £100 million a year. The cost estimates have been extrapolated from a survey in which firms were asked to set out their actual and/or expected budget for MiFID implementation. “It is clear that implementation of MiFID represents a substantial cost to industry particularly in the upfront years, but it does create the potential for revenue opportunities over the longer term. We would encourage firms to focus on these opportunities," said Hector Sants, FSA managing director wholesale and institutional markets.