FCA investigates CMC

The FCA has announced it is investigating the activities of The Claims Protection Agency Limited, a claims management company which has used several trading names, in relation to its advertising and sales tactics for potential motor finance commission redress claims. The FCA is specifically looking at what customers were told about the amount of redress they might get, whether they were told they could make a claim at no cost, and whether they were pressurised to sign up. The FCA says that announcing the investigation gives the firm’s customers the chance to consider their options and that the “exceptional circumstances” test, which allows publication of investigations, has been met.

The FCA had reviewed 20 customer files, and some call recordings, the firm’s website and its advertisements. It had several concerns, including the mentioning of amounts of potential refunds, excessive chasing of potential customers, how the firm identified and protected vulnerable customers, and that it routinely failed to tell customers they could make claims for free. As a result of this, the firm applied for a VREQ, effective from August 2025, as a result of which it cannot onboard new customers, and had to withdraw all existing financial promotions and not publish any new ones. But the FCA wanted to take matters further and told the firm at the beginning of September 2025 that it intended to announce that it had opened an investigation. The firm applied to judicial review of the decision. The High Court backed the FCA and dismissed the application, and, on 19 December, the Court of Appeal refused permission to appeal. The High Court had rejected the firm’s challenge to the FCA’s decision which it based on misinterpretation but considered the “reasonableness” aspect of the naming decision.  Essentially, it found the key theme behind the FCA’s decision to name was the need to communicate to customers, and the FCA had shown it had thought about the options and come up with reasons that publicising the name of the firm was the best option. The second part of the judgment was published on 2 January, and contains details that could not be released at the time of the High Court’s judgment in October, because of the firm’s appeal rights.