FCA fines fall by half in 2020 as Covid takes hit on enforcement December 21, 2020 The Financial Conduct Authority handed out £183.6m worth of fines this year, more than half the total bill in 2019. The number of fines has fallen too, from 21 to just ten. Lawyers believe the slowdown is due to the pandemic disrupting enforcement activities, not least the FCA’s ability to conduct witness and suspect interviews. [...]
Curve and Plaid team up to bring open banking to UK customers December 16, 2020 Curve, a smart banking platform, has joined forces with Plaid, an open finance data network, to help people manage their money.
Exclusive launch interview: CEO Jason Oakley on Recognise, Britain’s newest bank December 9, 2020 Following FCA approval of a banking license application in November, SME lender Recognise’s banking operations formally launch this morning with four branches in the City, Manchester, Leeds and the Midlands, as well as an app and online platform. To mark the arrival of Britain’s newest bank, City A.M. sits down with CEO Jason Oakley, a former head of [...]
Exclusive: Londoners take out 133 per cent more payday loans to cover Christmas this year December 4, 2020 Pressure on households to overspend this Christmas is increasingly making Londoners resort to payday loans to cover the costs of the festive period. Payday loans in London are set to increase by 133 per cent as households struggle to cover the costs of the holidays, according to the findings of a survey that pan-European credit [...]
UK has ‘significant’ ethnic wealth gaps, latest data suggest November 27, 2020 Wealth in the UK is divided along ethnic lines, the latest data from the Office for National Statistics suggest. White British headed households were the wealthiest ethnic group, according to data collected between 2016 and 2018. White households had a median net worth of nine times that of Black African households, the least wealthy ethnic [...]
‘Break’ London banks and give us access to data: fintech firms tell FCA November 24, 2020 A coalition of primarily London startups is calling on UK regulators to end the dominance of banking institutions over the use of consumer data as it would increase competition in the savings, credit, mortgages and pensions markets. The Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec), an advocacy group that represent a number of UK fintech firms [...]
Anti-vaxxers may lose travel insurance over Covid vaccine refusal November 17, 2020 Anti-vaxxers may risk invalidating their travel insurance if they are medically able but decline to have the coronavirus vaccine, an insurance expert has warned. Medical underwriting specialist and travel insurance expert Tricia Tietema told City A.M she would expect that those who are medically able to have the coronavirus vaccine, should one become available, but [...]
Investors clamp down on executives’ pension pay packets November 16, 2020 Investors are piling further pressure on companies to scale back executive pension packets to align with the rest of their workforce. In the past it has been common for executives’ pension contributions to be considerably higher than the rest of the workforce. Some progress has been made in bridging the gap but now investors want [...]
Gender pension gap narrows but women still lag behind November 11, 2020 Women will need to work beyond 100 to match men’s pension pots even as the gender pension gap narrows. More women are putting money aside for retirement, with the pension gap closing to just one per cent, the narrowest on record according to pension provider Scottish Widows. Despite this, the gender pay gap and part-time [...]
Scottish Widows pulls £440m from investments in ESG push November 9, 2020 Pensions provider Scottish Widows has announced it will pull millions from companies failing to meet its ESG standards. The £440m divestment from companies that “pose significant ESG” risk is the firm’s latest sustainable push, and is one of the largest exclusions policy by an institutional investor yet. The divestment seeks to protect almost 6m customers [...]