Report criticises FCA for causing stock market mayhem

Martin Wheatley, FCA

The FCA has come under fire again for mishandling last year’s announcement into the review of life insurance policies.

The Treasury Select Committee has released a scathing 89-page report on how the FCA should put its house back in order.

MP and committee chairman Andrew Tyrie said: “By effectively breaching its own listing rules, the FCA itself created a false market in life insurance shares.

“Had a regulated firm behaved as the FCA did last March, the FCA is likely to have imposed a considerable fine,” Tyrie added.

In March last year, FCA head of supervision Clive Adamson leaked details to a newspaper of the regulator’s plans to probe insurers who lock people into their pension plans.

Aviva, Legal and General and Prudential suffered a share price plunge as a result.

The FCA’s executive committee, headed by chief executive Martin Wheatley, should examine communications methods and “poor working relationships” between divisions, the report said.

The regulator’s board, headed by chairman John Griffith-Jones, should commission an external review of its own effectiveness, it said.