Three Firms & Five Individuals fined by FCA
The Financial Conduct Authority of the United Kingdom announced today that it had fined three firms with “Decision Notices” as of 2019-05-09. Additionally, five individuals were also issued fines by the FCA. These mark the first fines from the financial conduct authority in the second quarter of 2019.
The companies charged with these fines include the Henderson Carter Associates Ltd, the Bank House Investment Ltd and Financial Page Ltd. The individuals who were fines with decision notices include Tristan Freer, Andrew Page, Aiden Henderson, Thomas Ward and Robert Ward.
The UK Financial Conduct Authority believes that these three companies and five individuals had oversight. This is why the companies and individuals haven’t been imposed with hefty fines, instead only being charged with the bare minimum. All parties included in the penalties were charged with them for providing clients with outsourced and third-party advice. The FCA has stated that this isn’t wrongdoing and that this is more frowned upon then it is illegal. However, any future third-party information to come from these traders could result in them receiving significant fines in the future.
These three companies spoke with their clients and provided them with independent investment advice that wasn’t correlated with trading systems. This means that clients weren’t provided with an objective or comprehensive analysis of their trade. In reality, customers were given advice that leaned them towards illiquid assets which benefit the trader more than the investor. Mostly, these three firms were caught influencing the market for their benefit.
2000+ clients were affected by the false investing advice provided by traders. As such, a total of £76 million in assets had been lost. TO date, the FSCS (Financial Services Compensation Scheme” has paid back £26 million back to the clients that lost money.
