November 21, 2012 - The new regulatory regime in the UK's banking industry is potentially more complicated than the previous structure, an expert believes.

Bill Winters, who sat on the Independent Commission on Banking and is now a member of the government's banking committee, believes reforms to increase the power held by the Bank of England (BoE) may not work, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Speaking to the Treasury Select Committee yesterday (20 November), Mr Winters insisted that more needs to be done to make the regulatory hierarchy clearer or the system could be more "dysfunctional" than the pre-crisis one.

Before the onset of the collapse, the specialist feels there was often confusion over whether the BoE, Financial Services Authority and the Treasury held absolute regulatory power.

However, Mr Winters believes clarification is needed to ensure that the updated system - whereby the BoE is set to have overall control over regulation - represents an improvement.

"If you are not very clear about who's accountable for what, the buck will get passed," he warned.