On 2 November 2021, the FCA published a speech by its Chief Data, Information and Intelligence Officer, Jessica Rusu, which was delivered at the CDO Exchange for Financial Services.
In her speech, Ms Rusu discusses how the threat landscape has shifted for consumers and how new technology is now benefitting fraudsters and scammers, whilst new consumers are being drawn to high risk markets and products. The FCA seeks to protect customers in three ways by:
- Educating consumers with their campaigns; Scam Smart and InvestSmart.
- Engaging with social media platforms to ensure they are complying with laws that prevent communication of unregulated investments.
- Using its digital listening tools as they help collect data on a range of things from mortgages and investments to fraud and scams.
In terms of the ‘regulatory big data challenge’ the FCA is making the most of the data and intelligence it already collects to anticipate and predict harm. For example the scale of the order book data set gives the FCA unprecedented resource for understanding trading behaviours. By leveraging extract, transform, load (ETL) the FCA can see trading across the board, detect where it is being manipulated, and take interventions where it needs to. Connecting the different data sets is also helping the FCA form new intelligence and prioritise risks. For example, the FCA is identifying financial advisers most likely to give poor advice by tracking the outcomes from previous supervisory activity.
