FSA warns firms may try to shirk PPI liabilities by phoenixing
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The FSA has warned that firms reassessing past payment protection insurance complaints may look to shed liabilities by phoenixing.
Speaking at the Mortgage Business Expo in London yesterday, director of small firms and contact centre Lesley Titcomb told intermediaries the FSA was on the look out for this kind of activity.
She said: “Our recent consultation paper on payment protection insurance brought the prospect of firms having to reassess past PPI complaints they have rejected and some think this could mean more firms try and become phoenix firms to leave these behind.
“I should warn them that we are alive to that threat.”
She added: “We are watching certain firms very closely and we are determined to remain one step ahead of potential phoenix firms and take strong action against firms and individuals that try this.”
In her speech Titcomb also warned brokers about referring clients to claims chasers, cautioning that without the appropriate permissions, such deals could put them in breach of data protection rules.
Titcomb also pointed out that mortgage market review proposals to require income verification on all mortgages are not intended to exclude all self-employed borrowers from the mortgage market.
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Readers' comments (1)
Julian Stevens | 12 Nov 2009 1:07 pm
It is rather a shame, yet so wearingly familiar, that the FSA wasn't "alive" to the risks presented by its total lack of regulation of PPI selling before all the damage was done. Yet another case of the FSA being asleep at the wheel (or, as the TSC put it just a few years back when grilling John Tiner "positively comatose").
Who can blame business owners for phoenixing to get out from under the FSA's never ending succession of hindsight (oops, sorry, "thematic") reviews of past business?
When is the FSA going to stop shirking responsibility its own manifest failings?
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