FCA Publishes New Strategy to Tackle Investment Scams

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has set out plan to tackle investment scams, aiming to give consumers the confidence to invest and lead to fewer people being scammed or persuaded to invest in products too risky for their needs.

According to the plan, FCA will reduce the number of consumers who could benefit from investment earnings but are missing out and halve the number of consumers who are investing in higher risk products that are not aligned to their needs.

In addition, the regulatory watchdog aims to reduce the money consumers lose to investment scams perpetrated or facilitated by regulated firms and stabilise the £833m compensation bill for the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

To achieve the mentioned targets, FCA has set out a package of measures including launching a new £11m investment harm campaign, strengthening the Appointed Representatives (AR) regime, strengthening the financial promotions regime and so on.

“We want to give consumers greater confidence to invest and to help them do so safely, understanding the level of risk. The package of measures we have announced today are intended to support that – we want people to have greater confidence to invest,”Sarah Pritchard, Executive Director of Markets at the FCA, said.“We also want to be able to adapt more rapidly to the changing market and be assertive where we see poor conduct and consumer harm.”