The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has published complaints data relating to individual financial businesses for the period from 1 July to 31 December 2015.
The data shows that the FOS took on 164,347 new cases in the second half of 2015, 56% of which related to payment protection insurance. For complaints about financial products other
The Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013 (Designated Representative Bodies) Order 2016 has been published on the legislation.gov.uk website together with an explanatory memorandum.
The main purpose of the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013 (Designated Representative Bodies) Order 2016 is to give five bodies the status of designated ‘super-complainants’ for the Payment Systems Regulator
The FCA has updated its web page on Mortgage Credit Directive (MCD). The web page outlines the main changes made by the MCD to the regulation of first and second charge mortgages and ‘consumer buy-to-let’ lending (CBTL). It also assists firms looking for help with applying for authorisation as a second charge mortgage firm or registration as a CBTL firm. The MCD comes into force on 21 March 2016.
At the end of 2015, the Dutch Central Bank (De Nederlandsche Bank, DNB) announced that it would start an investigation into the capital policies of insurers in 2016. On 24 February 2016, DNB announced in its newsletter that it will commence its investigation in March 2016.
The primary goal of DNB’s investigation
Overview
The Senior Managers Regime comes into force on 7 March 2016. One element of the Senior Managers Regime is regulatory references, as recommended by The Fair and Effective Markets Review (FEMR) to “help firms prevent the ‘recycling’ of individuals with poor conduct records between firms”.
This article sets out the current rules relating
On February 18, 2016, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a settlement in its case against Butterfly Labs and two of its officers relating to computers that allegedly could be used to “mine” the cryptocurrency known as Bitcoins. In an earlier stage of the case in 2014, a federal trial court in Missouri granted
Market participants must be mindful of the robust enforcement environment at the CFTC and U.S. futures exchanges. In 2015, the CFTC brought numerous enforcement actions and continued to impose aggressive civil monetary penalties on market participants, including energy and agricultural companies. Significantly, the CFTC also started to pivot from implementing to enforcing its regulations promulgated
The FCA has published Discussion Paper 16/1: Ageing population and financial services, which encourages firms to do more to support the UK’s ageing population and ensure that consumers can access the financial products and services they need at every stage of their life.
In particular, the FCA is seeking views on:
The International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) has published a press release following a meeting to discuss and respond to the ongoing and emerging challenges facing global securities markets.
Discussions centred around the recent market developments and volatility in world capital markets and the challenges and opportunities posed by fintech and more particularly – distributed
On 22 February 2016, the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (Autoriteit Financiële Markten, the AFM) announced that it will maintain the €500 threshold for the initial ‘crowdfunding investment test’ (crowdfunding investeerderstoets), which will apply to investors investing through crowdfunding platforms. In December 2015, the AFM introduced new regulations for