“The reality is that there are things that go wrong within firms, which the senior management will not know about, and that is a fact,” the Financial Services Authority’s head of enforcement told sceptical parliamentarians. Tracey McDermott was giving evidence again to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards (PCBS), whose members yet again taxed her […]

  In November 2012 the FSA published a paper ‘Conflicts of Interest between asset managers and their customers’. This can be found at http://www.fsa.gov.uk/static/pubs/other/conflicts-of-interest.pdf Whilst this is geared towards investment managers and stockbrokers, it is actually a useful paper to read by the Financial Planner, helping to identify what questions they should ask a discretionary […]

Final guidance aimed at stopping financial firms from running incentive schemes that encourage mis-selling was published by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) on 16 January 2013. A review on the issue, which was published by the FSA in September 2012, examined the use of sales incentives and applied to insurers, banks, building societies and investment […]

In September 2012 the FSA published a review of sales incentives and asked for feedback on proposed guidance. At the same time Martin Wheatley, managing director of the FSA and CEO-designate of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), addressed an audience of senior bankers and insurers to ask them to end reward schemes that encouraged bad […]

FSA fines The Co-operative Bank plc for failing to handle PPI complaints fairly 08 Jan 2013 The FSA has fined The Co-operative Bank plc (Co-op) £113,300 (including a 30 per cent discount) for failing to handle payment protection insurance (PPI) complaints fairly in breach of Principle 6 of the FSA’s Principles for Businesses and Rules […]

Unprecedented scrutiny of UK asset managers set for 2013 03 Jan 2013 The UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) will increase its supervision of the asset management industry considerably in 2013. UK asset managers can look forward to more “Dear CEO” letters and many more requests for Section 166 skilled person reports. Intensive scrutiny of asset […]

FSA – Top 12 fines of 2012 03 Jan 2013 The FSA issued a total of £311.6m in fines against over 50 firms over the last year, a massive 371 per cent increase on the £66.1m in fines issued in 2011. The fines total was inflated in 2012 due to the significant penalties against UBS […]

HBOS boss fined by FSA slams bosses and regulator 03 Jan 2013 Former HBOS head of corporate banking Peter Cummings today accused the Financial Services Authority of blaming him alone for the bank’s near collapse in 2008, and said it was “sinister and curious that I was singled out”. He criticised the FSA, which fined […]