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Football clubs, their officials, players and employees are to be banned from holding any interest in licensed player agencies under new Football Association rules intended to tighten up potential abuses of the transfer market.

The measure, one of a raft of proposals approved in principle by the FA board last week, is intended to remove the potential for conflicts of interest posed by managers, club officials or players holding financial stakes in agencies with whom they are dealing in the transfer market.

The measure is one of several intended to restore some credibility to the FA's regulation of the transfer market. The proposals include agents having to submit to examination of their financial background and to register the identity of all third parties they may be working with on a deal.

The FA has been criticised for excising a clause from the new regulations that outlawed the contentious issue of "dual representation", the practice of agents representing more than one party in a transfer deal. It maintains, however, that even without a ban on dual representation these measures are a vast improvement on the current situation whereby the world governing body, Fifa, publishes regulations for agents but fails to enforce them.