Members of the Transparency Taskforce marketing campaign group met on-line with MPs and Lords yesterday to push for the brand new Monetary Companies and Markets Invoice, presently going by means of Parliament, to be amended to reform the FCA to enhance shopper safety.
The assembly adopted the latest BBC Panorama programme – The Billing Pound Financial savings Scandal – which questioned the FCA’s capability to guard customers from scams and poor or poisonous investments.
The Taskforce, which campaigns for reform of the monetary sector, needs the invoice for use to introduce plenty of reforms together with:
- Eradicating the FCA’s exemption from civil legal responsibility, widening the Complaints Scheme to impose redress for regulatory failure and backdating each to cope with historic claims
- Introducing a “real, easy statutory responsibility of care” rather than “the complicated and ineffective” new Shopper Responsibility
- Making a shopper oversight physique to carry the FCA to account and make key appointments, to make sure independence from the FCA and Treasury
The Taskforce mentioned in a press release: “The Monetary Companies and Markets Invoice reshores oversight of UK monetary regulation from Brussels. It is essential we use this chance to empower customers to affect how that energy is used, and never merely hand it to the Metropolis and its proxies, the FCA and the Treasury.
“After final month’s damning version of Panorama, The Billion Pound Financial savings Scandal and this week’s information that the FCA is requiring Hyperlink Group to ring-fence proceeds from its sale adequate to compensate solely a tenth of Woodford traders’ losses, it is essential that (new) mechanisms are launched.”
The Taskforce plans to work with specialist attorneys and supportive Parliamentarians to draft amendments to the Invoice and talk about ways and timing for proposing them.
The marketing campaign group mentioned its goal was to not create further regulatory burdens or prices for the trade however to finish the “unjust state of affairs” by which the sincere majority are judged by customers by the requirements of the unhealthy apples, and “even pressured by means of the FSCS levy to pay for the latter’s misdeeds.”
Andy Agathangelou, founding father of the Transparency Job Drive, mentioned: “For my part, the latest BBC Panorama programme reveals that the Monetary Conduct Authority fails to behave swiftly or successfully when monetary advisers or different right-minded stakeholders inform it about suspected scams.
“For the reason that documentary was broadcast, a whole lot of letters have been despatched to MPs by rip-off victims who’re eager that the Monetary Companies & Markets Invoice that’s working its method by means of Parliament now, be used to introduce reforms that may make the FCA do a greater job of defending customers. The assembly with Parliamentarians and different stakeholders was about exploring essential reform concepts, to see how they may very well be was amendments for the Invoice.”
