Our Enforcement team uses our statutory powers to gather information and evidence to understand whether and how a compliance failure has happened. Where appropriate, we can publish details of the compliance failure, impose financial penalties, or both.
Why do we enforce our rules?
It’s important that firms comply with their legal obligations. Enforcement sanctions make it clear that there can be consequences for firms that don’t. We have the power to impose financial penalties and to publish details of a compliance failure. Financial penalties are paid to the Treasury after deducting our enforcement costs. Publishing the details of enforcement sanctions helps us deter other firms from breaking our rules and allows us to explain what a firm should have done and how it got things wrong.
The ultimate decision on sanctioning a firm is made by the Enforcement Decisions Committee (EDC), an independent decision-making committee of our Board.
How we enforce our rules
We appoint investigators who can use our statutory powers to require firms to provide information or documents. We can also compel people to attend interviews if we think they may have information relevant to the investigation.
When we decide to act, we investigate quickly and transparently. A decision to open an enforcement case does not mean that we have decided that a firm has failed to comply, or that we will definitely impose a sanction. The investigation process allows us to consider the facts of the case, before deciding on what the right regulatory outcome should be.
Once we have considered the evidence, we can choose to recommend that the EDC start proceedings to decide whether and how to sanction the firm. The firm has the chance to make representations to the EDC before any final decision is made.
We also have a process that allows firms to enter settlement discussions with us. In this case the firm must accept that it failed to comply and agree to the sanction we propose, in return for a discount to the level of any penalty.
You can read more on how we calculate penalties in our statement of penalties.
So far, we have published the details of four enforcement cases:
- Five companies fined more than £33 million for cartel behaviour in the prepaid cards market
- NatWest Group banks fined £1.82m for overcharging interchange fees on credit cards
- Barclays Bank fined £8.4m for breaking interchange fee rule
- Compliance failure by the Cheque and Credit Clearing Company Ltd
We explain our enforcement process in more detail in our Powers and Procedures Guidance.
Report a concern
If you are an employee concerned about your employer’s conduct, first read the FCA’s guidance on whistleblowing which explains:
- how to be a whistleblower
- the law and your rights
- how we use whistleblowing information
You can use the whistleblowing procedures at your own workplace or contact us via the FCA’s Intelligence Department.
Get in touch
To contact the team, please email contactus@psr.org.uk or write to us at:
Enforcement team
Payment Systems Regulator
12 Endeavour Square
London E20 1JN