It appears that one of the reasons no-one in the City of London is getting anywhere with application of expert systems is that they can’t see beyond the current paranoia over insider trading, and so all the big share trading houses are trying to work out a compliance expert system to augment their compliance officer – but that should be easy enough, surely? Well, no, seems they’ve all been trying to do a system that applies the dreaded Financial Services Act rule by rule, and one expert system expert who has seen some of the attempts reckons he’s spotted the insuperable problem: it’s simply that the Financial Services Act is both inconsistent and incomprehensible.