Credit, Collections & Insolvency News
Guaranty Trust Bank has been fined £7,671,800 over serious weaknesses in its systems and controls designed to prevent money laundering. The Financial Conduct Authority found serious weaknesses in its anti-money laundering (AML) systems and controls between October 2014 and July 2019. During the relevant period, GT Bank failed to undertake adequate customer risk assessments, often not…
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Criminal gangs will continue to launder money in the UK as long as regulated firms insist on trusting manual verification checks, an anti-money laundering specialist SmartSearch has warned. A cross-sector survey of 500 UK-based decision-makers revealed that regulated firms in the North West, North East, and East of England rely most on manual checks to…
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A new non-profit company has been launched to protect cash in the UK communities. The company named Cash Access UK is made up of nine of the largest high street banks. The incorporation of the company, which has been supported by UK Finance from the beginning, is a major milestone in delivering the industry’s commitment…
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) have fined TSB Bank a total of £48,650,000 for operational risk management and governance failures, including management of outsourcing risks, relating to the bank’s IT upgrade programme. Technical failures in TSB’s IT system ultimately resulted in customers being unable to access banking services. In…
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined Santander UK £107,793,300 after it found serious and persistent gaps in its anti-money laundering (AML) controls, affecting its Business Banking customers. An investigation found that between 31st December 2012 and 18th October 2017, Santander failed to properly oversee and manage its AML systems, which significantly impacted the account…
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The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has outlined the technical process that banks and building societies will have to follow as part of its new reporting requirement for authorised push payment (APP) scams. APP scams are a major problem in the UK. In the first half of this year, there were over 95,000 incidents of APP scams, with…
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has proposed new measures to clamp down on illegal, unfair or misleading financial marketing. The FCA has today outlined new checks for those firms which want to approve financial promotions. The new measures will require firms to demonstrate they have the right expertise for the promotions they wish to…
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has set out proposals to improve the credit information sector so it can deliver higher quality and more comprehensive information for consumers and firms. Credit reference agencies (CRAs) build financial profiles of consumers which they sell to credit information users to inform lending and other decisions. The FCA wants to…
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The National Audit Office (NAO) has warned of a lack of progress in tackling criminal fraud. NAO analysis shows that fewer than one in two hundred cases of fraud reported to the police resulted in a criminal charge last year. The report shows that although the number of cases of reported fraud had risen from…
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has obtained a judgment against London Property Investments (LPI), NPI Holdings Limited, their director Daniel Stevens and his father, Tony Stevens, for arranging mortgages without FCA authorisation and exploiting vulnerable customers who were in financial difficulty. The judgment found that the defendants arranged high-interest, unaffordable bridging loans for consumers about…
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More than 1,000 customers will receive payments after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found Barclays failed to send PPI information. The CMA has written publicly to Barclays after the bank failed to send a reminder to customers of payment protection insurance (PPI) policies. Under the CMAA’s PPI order, PPI providers must send annual reminders…
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New data published by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has shown that the regulator intervened to amend or withdraw 4,151 financial promotions between July and September, the highest since it started publishing the data. Retail lending, investments and banking are the sectors with the highest rate of amends to or withdrawal of adverts and amount to…
Read moreThe Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has launched a review into big tech’s move into payments, deposit taking, consumer credit and insurance. While the FCA acknowledged that the involvement companies such as Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Meta could bring innovation and benefits to consumers by increased efficiency and delivering healthy competition, it said they could pose…
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