FCA Seen as 'Incompetent' and Rare Coins

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Hello. In today's Moneybox podcast, around 4.4 million UK households are likely to see the cost of their mortgage rise over the next three years. We'll get some advice for anyone coming to the end of a fixed deal and facing a financial shock. Plus, we'll hear from a nine-year-old coin collector on his rare two-pound coin and what other numismatists, did I say that right, need to know.

But first, the boss of the UK's Financial Conduct Authority has told Moneybox that the criticism from MPs that the regulator is seen as at best incompetent and at worst dishonest does not take into account the big changes it's already made. made.

The scathing new report was put together by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Investment Fraud and Fairer Financial Services, which is made up of cross-party MPs and members of the House of Lords. They spoke to victims of financial scandals who've lost... really life-changing amounts of money as a result. And they also heard testimony from people who worked and some who still do work for the FCA. Dan Whitworth has been ploughing through the 350-page report. Dan, what do we need to know?

Well, this report, to put it bluntly, Fliss, is damning of the Financial Conduct Authority. Remember, this is the UK's financial watchdog, the one organisation tasked with ensuring the good financial conduct of around about 50,000 firms. It covers everything from pensions to car finance. Now the FCA has just over 5,000 staff to help it do that. It is independent of the government and is funded by a levy on those firms.

Now, this investigation by the all-party parliamentary group started two and a half years ago, and it was prompted by a series of scandals which saw many thousands of people lose hundreds of millions of pounds, including the British Steel Pension Scheme and London... Capital and Finance or LCF. Now one victim of that last scandal was Andrea from Berkshire. There was just no oversight of all the procedures in place

It was so easy and took such little effort to see straight away that LCF, the people at the head of LCF were fraudsters. Yet all those simple procedures were completely overlooked. And they went ahead and regulated them. How on earth could FCA, as a legitimate organisation, actually decide to regulate fraudsters? Just one of the examples in the report. Dan, what are the main findings and do they make any recommendations?

Well, the report concluded that the FCA is widely seen as incompetent, that its integrity is called into question. It says a significant number of respondents believe the FCA sometimes acts in bad faith, that its treatment of whistleblowers is alarming.

there is a defective organizational culture driven from the top. Now, just some of the main recommendations are... the need for government intervention, a debate around whether the FCA should be abolished or reformed, a new supervisory council for the FCA, a new specialist department to help scam victims, the removal of the FCA's immunity from civil liability.

meaning it can't be sued overhauling the senior leadership team I could go on Fliss but you get the gist I do thank you Dan now this is not a select committee it's a less formal group of MPs Sam Rushworth the Labour MP for British

Bishop Auckland is one of them, and he's one of the co-authors of the report. I caught up with him on Zoom, and I asked about the FCA's position, which is that it's learned from historic issues and transformed as an organisation.

I don't think the proof for that is there. Firstly, if it learned from historic issues, it would have undergone much more radical reforms we wouldn't have seen people who were responsible for some of those decisions simply kind of recycled around the organization we wouldn't see this constant revolving door between regulators and finance companies and don't forget there are ongoing cases right

now where people who have been scanned are not able to access justice. So this is happening at the moment. A lot of people listening will want to know. if they're safe now, if the regulator is working well for them now. Now, one of the things that you've called for in this report is for the FCA senior leadership team to be replaced. This report was launched two and a half years ago.

A lot of the scandals that prompted the report are older than that. So why do you think it's important? Why was the conclusion of your report that the new leadership that's currently in place should go? For me, actually, this isn't about a witch hunt against individuals. It's recognising that the structure is wrong. Parliament needs to look carefully at the mandate that the FCA has. I think there probably is a case for saying it needs...

stronger powers. But also, we do need to have a leadership at the FCA that are willing to acknowledge the problems. Because if we keep having this sort of close-rank defensiveness... We're not going to make progress. And so it is really important that people are open to the findings of this report and don't see this. And frankly, I think this is what's being said, is that this is just all historic.

everything's fine. Well, it's not because we know this very day there will be people on the phone to people who will be scamming them. and there will be insufficient oversight of that. There will be people, and there are people, who are seeking justice, who are not getting justice. There are people who've committed criminal acts who are not being prosecuted.

When you say quite a damning report, I mean, that barely touches the sides. The language in this report was some of the most extreme I've ever seen. Incompetent, dishonest. At times the report sounds quite angry. And there was no real collaboration with the FCA. You didn't even show it with this report before publishing. It's being so combative, simply unhelpful when it comes to improving things for consumers. No, I don't think so, because I think.

what we've seen for far too long now is a an approach that's allowed people to mark their own homework. We've seen the same sort of institutional defensiveness in the FCA that we saw in the post office and in other well-known recent scandals.

We're talking here large numbers of people whose lives and retirements have been ruined. People have taken their own lives, tragically in some cases, over losing... all of their life savings to scams and there is currently no government body that is fit for purpose to protect people from that.

Sam Rushworth there. Now, in his first interview since that report was published, I've been speaking to Nikhil Rathi, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority. I began by asking him about Sam Rushworth's suggestion that there is a culture of defence... I think it's always very distressing to hear the testimony of victims of wrongdoing in financial services and that includes the fact that that distress can continue for many years. testimony you just played of a victim of LCF from a

A case of a number of years ago has clearly had a big impact on our organisation. There was an independent review by a former High Court judge, Dame Elizabeth Gloucester, which was published in 2020, which made a number of... recommendations and we have actively implemented those in the last few years to radically transform the way in which we operate so we're protecting millions of consumers around the country.

I can take you through a number of the steps we have taken, including extensive work, for example, to tighten up how we give licenses when people apply to us. 14 were rejected. Now it's around one in four. We are using technology to go after scam adverts on a massive scale as compared to a few years ago. A couple of years ago, we would have asked for around 500 to be amended or withdrawn a year. Last year it was around 10,000. And that comes after...

A lot of work with Google and other big tech firms also to make sure they're only allowing advertising from firms that are registered on our platform. We also have right now a record number of financial crime proceedings taking place. But I would also acknowledge... there's always more to do you know in a fast-moving digitizing financial services landscape we have to work ever harder to keep up with the fraudsters and the criminals so we will always stay focused on improving

our operational performance. But I don't think it would be fair to characterise the position as nothing has happened in the years that have gone by. Okay, there's always more to do. But do you believe that you've got nothing to learn from this report? On the LCF case, we... The report covers a lot of different scandals. The report covers LCF, it covers Conort, Collateral, where there are independent reviews. We've looked at those. We'll, of course, look at all the feedback.

that comes through to us and make sure we take that on board and continue to seek to improve how we work. The point around how we're accountable, in the last parliament we appeared. Before select committees, the Treasury Committee, committees in the Lords and others, 38 times more than any other regulator in the country, and openly took Parliament through all the steps we were taking year by year, month by month, so they could see how...

we were doing and of course parliament sets our objectives and not everybody in parliament has asked us to go in the direction that the report has asked us to you know the legislation passed recently asked us also to take into account a wider range of objectives including growth competitiveness of the financial services industry and so what's important for us going forward also in light of the letter the Chancellor sent me recently.

on growth is to have a good conversation with parliament and the government around how do we manage risk in the system in a complicated financial services system where we have a range of actors seeking to participate but we also have a very strong financial services industry that's

important to the UK economy. How do we manage that risk in the system? I just want to understand that because whistleblowers, victims of regulatory failure, current and former employees all contributed to this report. Is your position that they're wrong? They're just not up to date? know how you've improved.

I would say there's always more for us to learn. We have 5,200 employees, and I'm immensely proud of all the work they do day in, day out to ensure consumers are protected and to ensure market integrity, but also to support the competitiveness. of the financial services industry.

We don't run a zero failure regime. I think that would be unrealistic. So, for example, we issue several thousand consumer warnings every year of firms we think that are operating outside regulation, but we're worried they may not be operating legally. It wouldn't be feasible for us to launch... prosecutions for every one of those several thousand situations. We have to make judgments about the ones we think are potentially most harmful or where the loss is.

are most likely to impact soon. And I think that our metrics that we publish hopefully help to... aid scrutiny and Parliament looks at those very closely, as does the Treasury, and of course we take on feedback from all quarters.

Nikhil Rathi, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, speaking to me earlier. And I should say the Treasury also told us that many of the issues in the report have already been reviewed and that the FCA has made changes. It says the regulator will continue to learn from these experiences. and that it's securing an appropriate degree of consumer protection. Through frontline reporting, global stories and local insights, we bring you closer to the world's news as it happens.

giving you unlimited articles and videos, ad-free podcasts and the BBC News Channel streaming live 24-7. Subscribe to Trusted Independent Journalism from the BBC. Find out more Make money predicting football. Now you can. Now in Texas with Calci. Calci is the only platform that lets you legally trade on real world events in all 50 states from football to Bitcoin, the Oscars, and even politics. If it matters, you can trade on.

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Around 4.4 million UK households are likely to see the cost of their mortgages rise over the next three years. This is according to new data. The Bank of England warns this could mean 420,000 households paying as much. as an extra £500 a month when they come to refinance. The financial data firm Money Facts has told us that rates below 4% have pretty much disappeared from the market. Average fixed deals are now over 5%. And that, of course,

can be a big jump for anyone who's previously been paying one or two percent. John is one of those people. We've got a mortgage on our house in Leicestershire. We fixed it for 1.54% for five years. So I think we were quite fortunate with that deal. Having come to renew it, we were looking at rates in the... the early 4% category. I bided my time a little bit just to see

what would happen with the rates. We were then able to get a fix for 3.99% for two years which is good in the current market but we're currently on 1.54% so we're going to see our interest more than double.

That's going to cost us an extra £300 a month, which is a difficult pill to swallow because actually nothing has changed for us other than renewing our deal with our same lender. There's no exchange of money. There's no change to the terms. All we're doing is renewing a deal and paying £300 a month more for the... benefit of that.

The Bank of England also warns that up to 1.5 million people will see a second hike in what they pay, having already fixed to a higher price when rates first went up. Mel is one. Her payments went up by £300 in 2022. She's expecting... baby in March but faces another mortgage increase at the same time. I'm currently on a fixed rate deal of 4.81% which ends in March. If I'm honest I haven't been tracking what rates are doing and I'm a bit scared to look.

with our mortgage rate due to run out soon and at a time when our income is due to go down considerably. It is a real worry that we might be hit with another £300 hike and that it's just on the mortgage, let alone our other bills.

Well, listening to that is Sarah Tucker from the broker, The Mortgage Mum. Sarah, the Bank of England says a typical household coming to the end of their fixed rate deal in the next two years faces a jump of £146 a month. But the data also shows that... that 2.4 million households will actually see their payments come down because they fixed at even higher rates. What are you seeing?

We're seeing a real mix. There are more clients, unfortunately, that are still seeing an increase in their monthly payments. But we are seeing the other side of things where, like you say, people fixed their rate in 2022 and the rates had gone sky high and they have come down since then. So there is some easier conversations on our desk than there were.

were. But that's not to say that that's the majority. That's still the minority of conversations that we're having right now. But we've got that data from Money Facts showing deals under 4% have essentially gone. The market does seem to be quite volatile at the moment. Do you think it's worth waiting?

I don't think it's worth waiting. Something I always want to get across is that you should be working with advisors that reprice your deals. Unfortunately for the advisors out there, they are working twice as hard, sometimes three times as hard as they used to.

That's part of our job now is to reprice deals for our customers. And what that means is if you are coming up to a remortgage, you fix that rate in. But that doesn't mean it's the rate that you have to stick with until the day you complete. So we say to people. six months before your rates do to expire. Make sure that you're speaking to an advisor.

Don't stick your head in the sand. Find out what your new rate looks like. And if the rates do happen to come down in that six months, your advisor can reprice that deal and renegotiate it for you. And we'll do that again and again until you're... completion date happens. It's not ideal for anyone, but at least you know where you stand if you wait.

You could be waiting and it could go the other way. And that's quite important, isn't it? Because Mel talked about being almost afraid to look at the deals, but you would say, sort it sooner rather than later. What are the best rates that you're seeing at the moment? You're right in saying they don't start with a three anymore. We were very happy to see some 3% or 3.99% rates.

which sounds crazy to people that are coming off of 1% or 2% fixed rates, but that is a lot better than we anticipated for this year. Now, you can get rates in the 4% to 5% range, but you need to have a really decent amount of equity. property or a good deposit. So they're ranging, they really are between four and five percent. Now, people might be wondering why the Bank of England's base rate fell this month, but mortgage costs are climbing.

Yes, we thought the same thing. But actually, what's happened is lenders... predicted the Bank of England base rate was going to come down. So we actually saw a flurry of interest rates on the fixed rate market coming down before the announcement. But actually, that was our reward.

before the announcement was made. So we've not seen fixed rates going down. In actual fact, we've seen them going up. And that's because they focus on different areas. It's not just the Bank of England base rate that affects the fixed rate market. And the fixed rates are covered by lots of...

things going on, including the US election, including the autumn budget, and the markets are just a little bit more volatile. We're waiting for them to settle. So that base rate cut already priced in. Sarah Tucker from The Mortgage Mum, thank you very much indeed. Thank you.

More than half of the UK population collect something. Often it's stamps, maybe it's trading cards. According to the Royal Mint, almost one in five people collect coins. Now that can mean buying the commemorative sets and collecting historic coins, but probably nothing...

is quite as exciting for coin collectors as spotting a rare one in their change or even on the ground. And that's what happened to nine-year-old Xander, who's asked Moneybox what something he found on the ground is actually worth. I went to meet him and to learn about his interesting coins which began after his grandmother sadly passed away and left him her collection. These are the ones that she has collected.

I have collected, yeah, these, all of these and a few of those down there. So tell me some of the coins that we're looking at, because I don't recognise some of these coins. These are just the Olympic. So these are 50p's? Yeah, just 50p's, all of them. And it's just different pictures on them. Are you never tempted to just spend this money? Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes I am.

OK, tell me then about the £2 coin that you want to ask about. How did you find that? I was just walking to school and then I just spotted a coin on the side of the road. I picked it up, just looked at it. No more £2 coin because my grandad gets most of these Paddington ones so we normally give them to him so we thought like we should give it to him and then he just expected it and then saw the one missing on it.

What kind of £2 coin is it? It's a Rugby World Cup that's missing the one on £19.99 on this edge. So it just says 999? Yeah, just 999. Okay, and do you have, we've got to have a coin expert on the programme and we're going to talk to him about your collection and ask him about your coin. Do you have a question for him? Yeah, how much is it worth and is it... actually worth anything are you going to be disappointed if he says no no not really once you find rare coins you can keep them and just

keep them as a memory that you found them. Do you think your grandma would be very, very pleased to know that you're carrying on? Yes, probably, yeah.

Thank you, Xander, for showing me your very impressive collection. Dominic Chorney is a coin specialist at Baldwin's, which buys and sells rare coins, medals and banknotes. Dominic, what can you tell us then about the coin Xander found? Well, good afternoon. And yes, so there were 4.93 million of these 1999 two pound coins.

They were issued to commemorate Britain hosting the Rugby World Cup, which was held in Wales, which unfortunately Australia won. And it was the first commemorative... bimetallic two pound coin so you've got the two metals there this was the first commemorative issue so how rare then is is this coin with with this mistake on it is it a mistake could it be worth something

Well, we did a bit of research into these supposed error two-pound coins, and really it's not so much an error as just the way the coins were made. So the one on 1999 was very weakly impressed into the edge, and it was impressed over what... we call reading down the edge. So it's very hard to see the number one.

After 25 years of circulation, it can become even harder. So it is there. It was probably just put on incredibly lightly. And now Xander's coin has worn and been circulated and evidently been sat on the side of the road. It's become almost invisible. OK, so when Xander's asking, is this a rare coin? Is it worth something? What would you say to him?

Well, I would say be so careful looking on the popular internet auction websites. I went on Google earlier and I saw one that was listed for £80,000. Xander will be listening and thinking, yep, yep. Unfortunately, that's not very realistic. But you can find ones on the sold listings that I think are slightly more convincing, some for £5, some for £10, some for £15, some for £20. So maybe we're talking about a coin that's worth maybe £5 to £10.

So sort of five to ten times the value on it. Okay, that's very interesting because quite often you find something, you look it up on one of the auction sites and you think, right, it must be worth that much. How then can people check what a coin they have is worth?

Really important to go online, go to the Royal Mint website and look at the mintage figures. The smaller the mintage figure, the rarer the coin. So we've got nearly five million of these two pound coins in circulation. But something like the Kew Gardens 50p from 2009. There are only 210,000 of those minted. And we found out a couple of months ago that last year's 50 pence piece with the Atlantic salmon, they only minted 200,000 of those. That's quite a scarce coin as well.

So keep an eye out for that. What advice do you have for Xander and for any other collectors listening about how to build a collection? Buy the book before you buy the coin. There are plenty of...

coin guides out there that are not expensive, that tell you all about either modern coins or historic coins that you might find in your change. So get the book. It might cost £10, but at least you've got something to go on. And then try to buy coins in nice condition and coins that... as some sort of rarity, have some sort of scarcity associated with them.

And briefly, we're coming up to Christmas. Do you get people buying coins as gifts? Oh, for sure. I mean, people will be surprised you can buy a Roman coin for £5 or £50. So you definitely see Roman coins really popular around Christmas. And we get people coming into the shop literally... asking for threepony bits or sixpences to put in their Christmas pudding at Christmas.

Let me tell you that Dan Whitworth just lit up at that Roman coin news. Dominic Chorley, thank you very much indeed. Somebody's messaged the programme. They haven't given their name. They say, I've been a numismatist, had to say it again, since 1959. My oldest coin is...

dated 500 BC. You can feel the vast time that's elapsed since a coin was minted and the present. And that's a kind of mystical cosmic feeling. Thank you very much for that. Well, that's the end of this Moneybox podcast. I hope you're off to check your actual money boxes.

see if you've got anything collectible. Thank you to everybody who took part. In the next podcast, I take a look at what to do if your partner is controlling your money. New research suggests almost a million women are trapped in dangerous relationships because of finance. abuse and we know this affects men as well.

If there's a money story that you want us to take a look at, then please do get in touch. You can email moneybox at bbc.co.uk or send a voice note or comment on WhatsApp. The number is 033 067 83 183. Today, the reporter was Dan Whitworth, researcher Emma Smith, the studio manager Adam Dolan. Our editor is Jess Quayle. I'm Felicity Hanna and this was a BBC News money and work production for BBC Sounds. One winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.

We're still looking for Lucan all over the world. Lord Lucan is said to have killed the family nanny and to have attacked his wife before disappearing. Why has this, of all crimes, captured our imagination? is so murky. As I try to get to the bottom of the case, my preconceptions are blown apart. I mean, this is pretty weird stuff to have in a box, isn't it? What on earth is this for? The Lucan Obsession with me, Alex von Tanselman. From BBC Radio 4, listen now on BBC Sounds.

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