Article by Phil
An interesting article in the FT Adviser (10th February 2020) set out information about the FCA’s performance taken from a recent Freedom of Information request.
That request revealed that the number of complaints against the FCA rose by over 50% between 2018 and 2019, to 1,532 complaints.
425 of those complaints, 28% related to the regulators failure to act on information it had been provided, which are complaints about the FCA’s supervisory role. In addition, there were 274 complaints about their failure to spot a problem.
There were a further 384 complaints about errors on the register.
The article goes on to say that regulator had also just been reprimanded by the Complaints Commissioner for “wholly unacceptable” delays in their complaint handling process. In one instance they had taken over six months to respond to a compliant.
In other related news, the FT Adviser (5/3/20) reports that there has been a 234% increase in telephone-based pension scamming cold calls. This is against a backdrop of cold calling having been outlawed in financial services. There has also been a reported increase in so called text “phishing” scams, but a reduction in the number of e mail scams. Controlling and preventing scams clearly remains one of the most important areas of concern for the FCA.
