City watchdog rebuked after complaints double in a year

Highly critical report adds to litany of problems faced by FCA boss Andrew Bailey

Mr Bailey was heckled at the FCA's annual public meeting over his handling of a string of scandals (Reuters)

Britain’s financial watchdog has been heavily criticised and told to clear a growing backlog of complaints after the number of grievances from consumers and businesses almost doubled in a year.

The Complaints Commissioner, which oversees Britain’s financial regulators, said the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) often exacerbated the difficulties of complainants, many of who are anxious, angry and vulnerable, by delaying cases and failing to give its complaints team enough resources.

The highly critical report will add to a litany of problems faced by FCA boss Andrew Bailey who was the subject of anger at the watchdog’s annual public meeting this week.

Attendees heckled Mr Bailey for the FCA’s handling of a string of scandals including the collapse of London Capital and Finance (LCF) which left thousands of bondholders unsure if they will get their money back. The candidate to become governor of the Bank of England is also under fire for not acting to help NHS doctors’ surgeries that wrongly sold interest rate hedging products by RBS that saddled them with huge repayments.

The commissioner highlighted a number of examples which demonstrated the regulator's failure to do its job. In one case the FCA told a complainant that it's failure to properly regulate a firm accused of defrauding investors was an isolates incident. This was misleading, the commissioner said, because the FCA's shortcomings "had not been an isolated incident but reflected a significant backlog in the area concerned".

In another example, a consumer lost £45,000 after investing in a company which had been dissolved four years ago but stayed on the FCA register, giving people assurance that it was genuine and regulated. But fraudsters had set up a "clone" company with the same name in order to dupe investors.

The FCA recognised that it knew the company had been dissolved for years and should have been removed from the register but the regulator offered the complainant just £150 or distress and inconvenience.

“The FCA must, as a priority, complete its programme to strengthen its complaints team and eliminate the backlog of complaints,” said the commissioner.

The FCA’s performance has “slipped significantly” this year, the commissioner said. The number of complaints received by the FCA almost doubled to 1,075 in 2018-19 from 557 the previous year. Just 14 per cent of those grievances were upheld by the FCA.

Of the 71 cases concluded by the commissioner, almost half alleged that the FCA had failed to regulate effectively.

The FCA’s poor handling of complaints disproportionately affects vulnerable consumers and small businesses, the commissioner said.

Concerns about significant alleged failures to regulate lead to long delays while enforcement action is considered, sometimes followed by a prolonged inquiry, with complainants having their complaints indefinitely deferred, the commissioner said.

In its response to the commissioner, the FCA revealed that it is deferring complaints made about LCF.