Agency Profile
Address Line 1: 25 The North Colonnade
Address Line 2: Canary Wharf
Address Line 3: London
Post Code: E14 5HS
Phone Number:
Fax Number:
Email:
The FSA is an independent, non-governmental body set up to regulate the UK's financial services industry. So we have an amazing insight into an industry that touches millions of ordinary people every day. The FSA has four statutory objectives:
market confidence: maintaining confidence in the financial system;
public awareness: promoting public understanding of the financial system;
consumer protection: securing the appropriate degree of protection for consumers;
reduction of financial crime: reducing the extent to which it is possible for a business to be used for a purpose connected with financial crime.
So our outlook is simple: we exist to champion efficient, orderly and fair markets, safeguard the interests of consumers and contribute to the success of the country.
For our supervisors, this means assessing and reducing risk in the firms under their responsibility.
For our enforcement professionals this involves investigating cases of financial crime or misconduct and taking civil or regulatory action and/or bringing criminal proceedings.
The Enforcement division is split into three departments - Retail, Wholesale and Legal.
The aim of the Retail Department is to protect consumers and to raise standards in this area of the financial services industry. Retail is split into three teams containing both investigators and lawyers which take cases according to the size of the firm and the nature of the misconduct. Retail 1 focuses on the larger firms and particularly on cases concerned with the sale of payment protection insurance, general insurance and financial crime including data loss and money laundering. Retail 2 is particularly concerned with medium sized firms and with cases involving pressure selling by stockbrokers, mortgages and financial promotions. Retail 3 is concerned with a range of misconduct from amongst the population of around 18,000 small firms and also with firms conducting unauthorised investment business.
The Wholesale Department is concerned with cases involving firms whose business is predominantly in the wholesale and institutional sectors and with cases concerning the maintenance of efficient, orderly and clean financial markets. We have seven teams containing both investigators and lawyers whose cases range from insider dealing, market abuse and breaches of the listing rules to issues arising from inadequate systems and controls within wholesale firms. Our cases may result in the institution of criminal proceedings or purely regulatory action.
The Legal Department provides a concentration of litigation and policy expertise in order to give high quality legal and policy advice and assistance to the division. We are divided into three teams which between them lead Enforcement input into cross FSA policy projects or Enforcement related proposals for legislative change, advise on difficult or complex disclosure issues, co-ordinate requests for assistance to or from overseas regulators, conduct independent legal reviews of all cases before they proceed to settlement, the RDC or the courts and provide specialist litigation expertise including advocacy.
