3rd July 2015

Banking fines and disciplinary action

London, 3^rd July 2015 – Panacea Adviser, the online community and resource for financial advisers and paraplanners, recently submitted an FOI request to the FCA in regard to the highest ever regulatory banking fine was levied against Barclays.

We asked:

• How much was paid to the Treasury
• How many Barclays employees were subject to disciplinary action by the FCA in connection with the offence

 The reply has now been received: 

1. How much was paid to the Treasury.

The entire fine will be paid over to the Treasury as our 2015/16 budgeted Enforcement costs have already been collected prior to receiving the penalty from Barclays.

Panacea is of the view that mega fines like this should be used to reduce regulatory costs and not paid away to the Treasury as this is, in effect, another form of taxation but with the revenue raising powers passed to someone else to do the deed. 

2. How many Barclays employees were subject to disciplinary action by the FCA in connection with the offence.

We have interpreted this question to be a request for the number of Barclays employees who have been sanctioned as the result of an Enforcement investigation, to which the answer is none.  

Many small regulated adviser businesses will see that this ‘Orwellian’ approach to disciplinary action with absolutely no sanctions being applied to any member of the banks staff (whose ‘actions outcome’ has resulted in the largest ever UK regulatory banking fine) as treating bank staff guilty of bad behaviour in a preferential way when compared to themselves.

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