Financial Conduct Authority
Debate between Guto Bebb and Nigel Evans(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Guto Bebb
I sympathise fully. When I established the all-party parliamentary group on interest rate swap mis-selling, I expected it to be closed within a year. Four years later, I am still raising debates on the issue, so I share the concern that people are knocking their heads against a wall and getting nowhere.
The Treasury Committee intervened and the FCA finally published its rules in February 2015. Therefore, it can be argued that for two years, every appeal was being made in the dark. The release of the rules led to a further complication. It suddenly became apparent that the way in which the customers of RBS were being treated in the redress scheme was significantly different from the way in which the customers of other banks were being treated.
The APPG did a significant analysis of cases that had been through the redress scheme. It showed clearly that the chances of getting a swap for a swap outcome was much stronger for RBS customers than for customers of other banks. A swap for a swap outcome basically means that the redress to which someone is entitled is significantly less than it would otherwise be. The reason was that RBS appeared to be relying on a generic condition of lending that was not deemed significant by some banks within the review, but that, for some reason, was deemed sufficient for a swap for a swap outcome by RBS.
I met RBS with other members of the APPG to highlight the discrepancies. We were told that the rules that were released to the Treasury Committee were not rules, but principles. Although those principles had been established for the scheme, apparently 11 different methodologies were agreed with 11 different banks. It is arguable that the Treasury Committee was misled because when it asked for the rules, it is unclear whether it got rules or principles.
I ask again: if a business does not feel that it received an adequate offer from a bank, how can it challenge the decision if it does not know what the methodology was? I met the FCA, because RBS was perfectly happy about this issue. It said, “We have a methodology that we have agreed with the FCA and we are delivering on it.” When I met the FCA, it confirmed that it had different methodologies within the scheme, but, again, it did not share those with me. If an RBS customer is unhappy with their outcome, it is difficult for them to argue their case, because they are not being provided with the information that they need to do so.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the FCA ought to look at transparency, speed and fairness? It seems to me that the FCA has taken no regard of the fact that many of our constituents—probably running into the hundreds of thousands across the country—have lost tens of thousands of pounds. In many cases, these are elderly people who were relying on that money to keep them into their old age.
Guto Bebb
I endorse those comments completely.
Swap for swap outcomes are much more likely for RBS customers and the percentage of non-compliant sales that do not result in a tear-up of the agreement within RBS has gone from about 40% to about 60%, which is not in line with other examples. I would argue that the voluntary scheme that the FCA put together is not delivering and is not being monitored in accordance with the FCA’s mission statement. I will leave that issue there because I have spoken at length about interest rate swap mis-selling in this Chamber and made my concerns known time and again.
When the voluntary redress scheme was announced, we thought that the inclusion of consequential losses was a pleasant surprise. I am afraid that we were being overly optimistic. Our analysis of the redress scheme showed that in 50% of the 3,104 cases that we looked at, no consequential losses were received, and in 85% of the cases that did receive consequential losses, they amounted to less than £10,000. I have personally seen dozens of well-argued cases in the redress scheme that have been rejected by the banks without an explanation. Even worse, the business is allowed one appeal against that decision without knowing the basis on which it has been rejected—it has one opportunity to challenge, and invariably that challenge fails. On consequential losses we are again failing businesses.
Time and again cases go to court. They are often settled outside court, where the settlement will be better than what was offered under the redress scheme, and that should be a cause of concern for the regulator. Of perhaps even more concern to Members of the House is the fact that time and again gagging orders are placed on those settlements by a taxpayer-funded bank on the back of taxpayers. I find that utterly unacceptable.
Let me move on to the Connaught Income Fund, which creates a real problem concerning regulation in this country. The regulator was informed not of mismanagement but of fraudulent behaviour, yet it took four months before it put a notice on its website to highlight its concerns and say that the fund in question was not as safe as a bank account, and a further year before that fund was wound up. In the meantime, between the whistleblower informing the regulator about the problem with Connaught and the winding up of the scheme, more than half the total investments into the Connaught income stream occurred. It could therefore be argued that the regulator was responsible for at least half the fund.
Welsh Affairs
Debate between Guto Bebb and Nigel Evans(12 years, 8 months ago)
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