Emma RadmoreThe All Party Parliamentary Group on Investment Fraud and Fairer Financial Services has published its report following its call for evidence about the FCA. The report does not make happy reading for the FCA. The report concludes that the FCA is an “opaque and unaccountable” organisation, which is slow to act and even slower to admit failings and to implement change.
The APPG heard evidence from 174 respondents, including whistleblowers, current and former FCA staff and victims of regulatory failure.
The report is the result of over 2 years’ work, and was prompted by several external reviews and inquiries that criticised the FCA. It focussed on whether the FCA is still hampered by poor culture. The Group found a great consistency of evidence, and the key findings of the various workstreams are:
- the FCA is widely seen as incompetent;
- a significant number of respondents believe the FCA sometimes acts in bad faith;
- the FCA fails to protect, and sometimes actually harms, whistleblowers, while failing properly to investigate the intelligence they provide;
- the organisation’s culture has got worse rather than better – and that those who challenge an “official line” are bullied, discriminated against or managed out; and
- transparency and accountability are lacking.
The report stresses that the FCA’s Transformation Programme has not resolved the list of problems the report identifies.
The report makes a number of recommendations, while not yet going so far as a radical recommendation that the FCA should be stripped of all but conduct regulation, and includes detailed extracts of evidence received and a summary of its findings on the most common complaints.