FCA has published its first supervisory notice against Semantic Business Services Ltd, a secondary credit broker. It plans to remove the firm’s permissions because:
- the firm has links with a number of other firms against whom FCA has already taken regulatory action or about whom it has significant concerns, and it is worried that Semantic may be using its regulated status to take advantage of consumers; and
- the firm has not dealt with FCA in an open and cooperative manner – it has potentially misled FCA in response to a s165 request, has failed to respond to queries about its director, has not submitted any regulatory reports since it became authorised and has failed to respond to other s165 requests.