UK financial watchdog chair accused of whistleblower breach

The chair of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is reported to have forwarded emails in December 2023 and March 2024 that contained the complainant’s unredacted name, address, and concerns. The FCA’s whistleblowing policy states, ‘Your identity will not be revealed without your consent.’ The whistleblower, who was dismissed from the regulator in 2021 for alleged misconduct and lost an employment tribunal case (which they are appealing), raised concerns about allegedly opaque hiring practices, leading to an internal review.

The FCA has also initiated a second internal audit in response to the whistleblower’s correspondence, which will scrutinise the watchdog’s process for deciding whether allegations of misconduct should be formally internally investigated.

FCA criticised for handling whistleblower cases

The regulator has already drawn criticism over its handling of whistleblowers. In 2023, the Information Commissioner’s Office ruled that the FCA had breached its data protection obligations. The Times reported that the case involved the FCA allegedly intercepting and diverting staff correspondence, including confidential whistleblowing emails, to keep track of people it considered a nuisance.

In a separate case in 2018, the Financial Regulators Complaints Commissioner slammed the FCA for revealing the identity of a Royal Bank of Scotland whistleblower to the bank, though the FCA said then that the claims against the bank now known as NatWest ‘proved to be groundless.

Whistleblowing policies

The FCA requires regulated firms to have internal policies on lodging complaints that promise confidentiality, and to report annually on how well they work. Barclays’ former chief executive was fined over GBP 600,000 by the FCA and Bank of England in 2018 after trying to uncover the identity of an anonymous whistleblower.

FCA employees are required to complete annual mandatory whistleblowing training, though ‘it appears this requirement isn’t applicable to the FCA chair’, the whistleblower said.