The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) admitted to some supervision failures that led to customers losing money in the collapse of the authorized payment processor Premier FX in 2018. The Regulator had been investigating complaints concerning its actions in the run-up to the Premier FX collapse. Of the 31 allegations against the regulator, the FCA has upheld five, including its decision to reauthorize Premier FX in May 2018, three months before the company was forced into administration.
The FCA investigated the circumstances that led to Premier FX’s insolvency and identified serious misconduct perpetrated by Premier FX and its bankers Barclays Bank Plc. The FCA took action on both, and as a result of enforcement action taken against Barclays Bank Plc, it voluntarily agreed to repay the people who lost money in Premier FX. By April 2022, they were repaid all the money they originally paid in that had not been paid out when Premier FX collapsed.
We are very sorry for the mistakes we made prior to the collapse of Premier FX. We are a very different regulator today than we were during the period that these complaints cover.
FCA press release 19 Aug 2022
An FCA spokesperson said: “We recognise that the collapse of Premier FX resulted in the loss of significant sums of money for its customers, and welcome the fact our successful enforcement action against Barclays Bank plc has meant that all 167 affected Premier FX customers with accepted claims have had 100% of the money they paid in returned.“
The Twitter Critics
On Twitter, Ian Becket (Twitter) takes a hard line with the FCA. He suggests that the FCA has failed to act despite the obvious regulatory misconduct. Even after the Bank of Portugal fined PremierFX for operating illegally in Portugal, “the blind-eyed financial regulator (@theFCA) ignored not just the Bank of Portugal, but also PremierFX reporting itself to the FCA for operating illegally.“
