The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) needs to provide more clarity and be more assertive about protecting consumer rights, hit by years of misleading sales tactics, former top policymakers Hector Sants and Paul Myners have said.
Myners said he fears the FCA, like all regulators, runs the risk of "being captured by the regulator" and has not heard a "radical agenda" from the watchdog yet.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Access deeper industry intelligence
Experience unmatched clarity with a single platform that combines unique data, AI, and human expertise.
The financial crisis prompted Britain to scrap the decade-old Financial Services Authority (FSA) and replace it with the FCA in April this year. FCA supervises some of the world’s biggest foreign exchange, stock, bond, commodities and derivatives markets.
Be bold
Myners, financial services minister during the financial crisis, said many of the directors and non-executives at lenders that sold loan insurance were still in their jobs.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalData"I would have liked to have got a sense the FCA had a more challenging position. I didn’t really hear that," Reuters quoted Myners saying.
Sants, who is currently head of compliance at Barclays, said FCA’s approach to the wholesale market and the extent to which consumers are responsible for what they buy are also unclear.
"To reset the agenda between firms and consumers, you have to be bold," Sants said.
Work in progress
The FCA has recently said it is gathering information on potential manipulation of benchmark foreign-exchange rates, amid new allegations that traders at banks are rigging rates to maximise profits.
The investigation centres around claims that bank staff are making trades before processing customer orders, and also timing them to influence the setting of benchmark rates.
