March 17, 2026

Daniel Lee

There are two phrases the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) seems to adore… “on the balance of probability”, and “more likely than not”.

In theory, that sounds reasonable enough. In practice, it has become a convenient hiding place. A slogan. A shield. A way of dodging hard evidence in favour of whatever tortured explanation best protects the financial firm on the other side of the complaint.

And that is exactly what we have seen again in our latest response.

The finance agreement is dated 10th January 2018;
The dealership invoice is dated 10th January 2018;
The disbursement form is dated 10th January 2018;
The demands & needs statement is dated 15th January 2018;

In this case, the evidence is not vague. It is not incomplete. It is not evenly balanced. It is not a matter of guesswork, probability or speculation. It is proven and documented.

We have shown that the GAP insurance was invoiced and paid for five days before the Demands and Needs statement was even completed, and that the two-day cooling-off period was not adhered to.

This conclusion is reached by simply reviewing the documentation provided by the dealership itself.

That should be the end of it, but this is FOS.

It is not a close call. It is not a nuanced debate. It is not one of those cases where FOS can shrug its shoulders and reach for its favourite phrase. The paperwork proves what happened. The timeline is there in black and white.

And yet, in the face of that evidence, FOS has had the audacity to suggest that the dates on the paperwork may have been an administrative error.

Of course they may have. Anything may have happened if imagination is allowed to outrank evidence.

To add to this, FOS has stated that there is no evidence that the motor finance agreement had commenced, again contrary to the actual motor finance agreement and statement of account.

Maybe the paperwork wrote itself. Maybe the clock was wrong. Maybe the dates aligned by cosmic accident. Maybe reality itself simply became inconvenient.

This is the absurdity of what consumers and their representatives are up against. When the evidence supports the lender or dealership, it is treated as solid. When the evidence exposes the sale, suddenly we are invited into a fantasy world where documents become unreliable, timelines become flexible and obvious failings become “possible admin errors”.

It is beyond parody.

When Proof Exists, Why Is FOS Still Guessing?

FOS loves to speak about deciding cases on the balance of probabilities, but what happens when the probabilities are no longer relevant because the facts are already proven? What happens when the documentary evidence is so clear that the only way to avoid the obvious conclusion is to invent an alternative explanation for the business being complained about?

Apparently, what happens is that FOS bends over backwards to find another reason based upon fantasy.

That is why we say, repeatedly and without apology, that we are required to educate FOS on an almost daily basis. Not because the issues are especially complicated. Not because the rules are impossible to follow. But because even straightforward evidence is too often met with resistance, excuse-making and institutional reluctance to hold lenders and brokers properly to account.

This is not impartial scrutiny. It is not robust adjudication. It is certainly not consumer protection.

It is damage control, and it is institutional collusion.

The Pattern Is Impossible to Ignore

No matter how clear the evidence, there seems to be a route by which the firm can attempt to be rescued. A missing document becomes unimportant. A contradiction becomes harmless. A clear breach becomes an “administrative error”. A proven failure becomes something FOS can wave away with a speculative alternative that just so happens to favour the financial business.

Consumers are entitled to ask a very simple question, if proof is not enough, what exactly is?

Because if an invoice and payment date showing GAP was put through before the Demands and Needs statement was completed does not prove the process was broken, then the process is not merely flawed. It is rigged in favour of the industry.

You might as well hire the largest shredder you can find, and get rid of all of your documentation.

And yes, we are now calling it what it increasingly looks like.

When an organisation charged with deciding complaints fairly stretches itself to explain away clear evidence whenever that evidence is inconvenient to lenders and dealerships, people will naturally begin to ask whether this is mere incompetence, or something worse. Whether it is bias, capture, or collusion by culture rather than confession, the end result is the same… the consumer loses, the lender / dealership is protected, and common sense is shown the door.

That is why this complaint has now been escalated to an Ombudsman, trusting once again that one of the very few people remaining within the service with a modicum of common sense will reach a fair conclusion.

It should never have been necessary. But here we are again, climbing another rung of the ladder because the first response could not bring itself to accept what the evidence plainly showed.

The Wall Around the FCA and FOS Is Starting to Crack

This is also why the latest criticism from Parliament matters. The All-Party Parliamentary Group report into the FCA adds to a growing sense that confidence in the regulatory and redress system is collapsing. More and more people can see what consumers and representatives have been saying for years, that these bodies do not look like fearless protectors of the public. Too often, they look like protectors of the banking sector first, and reluctant servants of justice a distant second.

The façade is weakening.

For years, the FCA and FOS have benefited from institutional deference. They were treated as referees. Neutral adults in the room. Bodies whose conclusions should be respected because they were presumed to be independent, balanced and expert.

But that deference is collapsing under the weight of lived experience.

When evidence is ignored, when obvious failings are excused, when consumers are forced to fight every inch of the way, and when even clear documentary proof is met with “maybe it was an admin error”, respect turns into suspicion.

And suspicion turns into something even more dangerous for these institutions.

Recognition that the system is not malfunctioning by accident. Recognition that it is operating exactly as entrenched, self-protective systems tend to operate. Recognition that when push comes to shove, the benefit of the doubt too often flows in one direction only.

Call It What It Is

So let us be absolutely clear.

If GAP was invoiced and paid for five days before the Demands and Needs was completed, that is not a paperwork quirk. It is not a harmless inconsistency. It is not an administrative mystery. It is evidence of a process that was fundamentally wrong.

And if FOS cannot say so plainly, then FOS is part of the problem.

But the bigger point remains, a redress system that has to be dragged back toward reality every single day is not fit for purpose. And the more these cases pile up, the harder it becomes for the FCA and FOS to maintain the fiction that they are acting as independent guardians of fairness rather than institutional defenders of the firms they are supposed to police.

The wall is trembling.

And when it finally comes down, it will expose both organisations for what far too many consumers already believe them to be, protectors of banks, not champions of justice.

We will call it out, and we will defeat injustice.

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March 13, 2026

Daniel Lee

When “No” Apparently Means “Sell It Anyway”

When “No” Apparently Means “Sell It Anyway”: Re-Educating FOS on GAP Insurance, Yet Again

There are times when a complaint file lands on your desk and you wonder whether anyone at all has read the paperwork.

This is one of those times.

In this case, the dealership’s own Demands & Needs statement recorded that the customer answered “No” to the question of whether he saw a need for the GAP insurance product. Not “maybe”. Not “unsure”. Not “I’ll think about it”. A clear and unequivocal “NO”.

And yet, despite that, the dealership (Perrys) went ahead and sold the policy anyway.

That should be the end of the argument. The firm’s own documentation recorded that the customer did not identify a need for the product, and the product was still sold. It is difficult to imagine a more obvious example of a sale contradicting the very compliance document supposedly designed to justify it.

But, as ever, common sense is too often in short supply when FOS gets involved.

So what was the investigator’s answer?

The investigator suggested that the customer had the benefit of the cover.

That is exactly the sort of reasoning that turns a supposedly independent dispute resolution service into an exercise in excuse-making.

Of course the customer had the “benefit of the cover” in the most theoretical sense. That is true of almost any insurance product ever sold. Travel insurance has a benefit if your holiday goes wrong. Home insurance has a benefit if your house burns down. Pet insurance has a benefit if the dog becomes ill. The point is not whether a policy could, in some hypothetical scenario, produce a benefit. The point is whether it was wanted, needed, and properly sold.

That is where this sale falls apart completely.

What is the point of a Demands & Needs statement?

Seriously, what is the point?

If a customer can expressly state that they do not see a need for a product, only for the product to be sold anyway, and for that sale to later be defended on the basis that the customer might have benefited from it under some imagined future scenario, then the entire Demands & Needs process is meaningless.

At that point, the form is not a safeguard. It is not evidence of a compliant sale. It is not proof that the customer’s circumstances were considered. It is just a prop. A bit of paperwork to wave around until it becomes inconvenient, at which point it can be ignored.

That is the absurdity at the heart of cases like this.

The industry loves forms, scripts and signatures when they appear to support the seller. But the moment the paperwork clearly undermines the sale, suddenly we are told not to focus too much on what the customer actually said, because perhaps the product might have been useful after all.

That is not regulation. That is not redress. That is not adjudication. That is damage limitation.

The dangerous logic behind this excuse

If FOS is going to accept the argument that an “add-on” insurance product was acceptable simply because it could have offered some benefit, then every mis-sale becomes capable of retrospective justification.

Did the customer say they did not need it? Doesn’t matter, it might have helped.
Did the documentation contradict the sale? Doesn’t matter, there was still cover in place.
Was the product unsuitable, unwanted or unnecessary? Never mind, there was a hypothetical scenario where it may have paid out.

That logic destroys the whole concept of needs-based selling.

By that standard, virtually any add-on insurance can be defended after the event. And if that is where FOS has got to, then firms will quite rightly conclude that compliance documents do not need to be accurate, meaningful or respected. They merely need to exist.

That is a disgraceful message to send.

Once again, consumers are expected to fight the obvious

What makes this even more frustrating is that this is not a finely balanced case. This is not some complicated legal puzzle. This is not a nuanced dispute requiring academic debate.

The customer said “NO” to needing the product.

The dealership sold it anyway.

Its own paperwork contradicts the sale.

This should not require a battle. It should not require “re-educating” the Ombudsman Service on the purpose of its own regulated sales documents. And yet here we are, once again, spelling out the obvious and pushing back against reasoning that should never have made it out of the gate.

Consumers deserve better than this. Representatives should not have to drag FOS back to first principles every time a plainly defective sale is dressed up as acceptable.

A familiar problem

It is hard not to notice how often this sort of reasoning seems to emerge from people with backgrounds in the very sectors consumers are complaining about.

That does not automatically make an outcome wrong, of course. But it does little to inspire confidence when obvious consumer harm is brushed aside in favour of the same tired, industry-friendly logic: yes, the paperwork is poor, yes, the sale looks questionable, yes, the customer said no, but perhaps there was still some benefit.

That is not a serious way to resolve complaints.

That is the language of a system far too comfortable explaining away misconduct.

The case has been escalated, as it should be

Needless to say, the complaint has been escalated.

Because if a Demands & Needs statement recording that a customer did not see a need for GAP insurance is not enough to demonstrate that the subsequent sale was fundamentally flawed, then the industry and FOS may as well stop pretending these documents have any purpose at all.

You cannot tell consumers their needs matter, ask them to confirm whether they want a product, record a clear “no”, and then later shrug your shoulders and say the product might have been beneficial anyway.

That is nonsense.

We trust that, at the next stage, common sense will prevail.

Even at FOS.

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March 11, 2026

Daniel Lee

Dirty Business Dirty Regulation

Dirty Business, Dirty Regulation: Is There Any Real Difference Between the Environment Agency and the FCA?

Watching Dirty Business is enough to make your blood boil. Not just because of what it says about the water industry, but because of what it appears to expose about the regulator that was supposed to keep it in check.

And the more you watch it, the harder it becomes to ignore the obvious question… are we really looking at an environmental scandal alone, or are we looking at the same regulatory disease that has infected financial services for years?

Because once you strip away the sewage pipes and replace them with finance agreements, the parallels with the FCA and, by extension, the FOS, are not just striking. They are damning.

The Environment Agency has long been criticised for relying on operator self-monitoring. In plain English, that means regulated firms are trusted to report on their own compliance, their own breaches and, too often, the scale of their own wrongdoing.

Sound familiar?

Because that is exactly the smell coming off the FCA’s handling of the motor finance commission scandal. The watchdog banned discretionary commission in 2021, but only after the market had already been allowed to fester. Since then, the public face of the response has been review, pause, consultation, more pause, and now a watered down compensation scheme, all after the scandal was already in full flow.

That is not proactive regulation. That is turning up after the building has burned down and asking whether a consultation should be launched into the temperature of the flames.

But Dirty Business goes further than mere regulatory laziness or weakness. One of the most chilling suggestions in the series is that criminality had effectively been built into the water companies’ business models. Not as a one-off lapse. Not as the work of a few bad apples. But as a commercial strategy where breaking the rules, cutting corners and risking unlawful conduct was simply part of the profit calculation.

And that is where the comparison with banking becomes deeply uncomfortable.

Because it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that parts of the banking sector have not adopted much the same approach. When unlawful or unfair conduct becomes widespread, persistent and highly profitable, it stops looking accidental. When firms design sales models, commission structures and complaint handling processes in ways that maximise revenue first and worry about legality later, that is not a compliance failure. That is a business model.

And in motor finance, that is exactly what this scandal risks exposing.

Discretionary commission was not some obscure technical glitch. It was a system that allowed brokers and dealers to increase the interest rate paid by consumers in order to increase commission. It created a direct financial incentive to overcharge. That is not a minor oversight. That is the industrialisation of consumer harm.

And even now, the response tells its own story. There have been no headline-grabbing personal consequences for senior executives. No sense that those at the top who presided over unlawful conduct are being pursued with anything like the seriousness the scandal deserves. Instead, the debate has largely centred on the cost of redress, the impact on firms, and how to manage the fallout.

In other words, exactly the sort of response you would expect where wrongdoing is not treated as an aberration, but as something the system is quietly built to absorb.

Then there is the money.

The FCA is funded by the firms it regulates. The FOS is funded by the industry too. And while the Environment Agency is structured differently, it is likewise not immune from the distortions that come from being financially entangled with the sectors it oversees.

Now, that does not automatically prove corruption. But it does create the kind of dependency that breeds timidity, caution and institutional self-preservation. It creates regulators that talk tough in public while acting delicately in practice. Regulators that become obsessed with “stability”, “proportionality” and “market confidence” just as ordinary people are discovering they have been ripped off, poisoned, ignored or fobbed off.

And what happens when somebody points this out?

In Dirty Business, the whistleblower is not portrayed as being welcomed with gratitude and urgency. Quite the opposite. The picture painted is of an organisation more interested in containing the problem than confronting it. That, again, feels painfully familiar. In financial services, the establishment line is rarely, “Consumers need expert help against powerful firms.” It is usually, “Do they really need representation?” The push is always toward keeping people inside a system that the institutions already understand, already dominate, and already know how to game.

That is one of the grimmest similarities of all. Both systems start to look less like avenues of accountability and more like closed loops of managed dissent. Whistleblowers are inconvenient. Professional representatives are inconvenient. Independent scrutiny is inconvenient. What is always preferred is a quieter victim, a cheaper complaint, a softer challenge.

Then there is the revolving door problem, the broader and deeply corrosive culture in which regulators and regulated sectors become part of the same professional ecosystem. The result is not always overt misconduct. Often it is worse… shared assumptions, shared language, shared instincts and shared loyalties. Eventually, the regulator stops seeing itself as a public shield and starts behaving like an industry risk manager.

That is when enforcement dies.

Look at the contrast between the scale of the motor finance scandal and the visible response. The public has seen consultations, pauses and reduced compensation proposals. What it has not seen is a ferocious display of executive accountability that matches the seriousness of the wrongdoing.

And that is the heart of it.

When unlawful conduct on an industrial scale leads not to personal accountability at the top, but to carefully managed remediation architecture, the message is unmistakable. If you are big enough, important enough, or politically awkward enough to challenge, the state will manage your scandal rather than punish it.

That is how public trust collapses.

The Environment Agency was supposed to protect the environment, yet Dirty Business leaves viewers asking whether it became too close, too passive and too compromised to do the job properly. The FCA was supposed to protect consumers and market integrity, yet in motor finance it has looked slow, cautious and acutely aware of the consequences for firms. The FOS, meanwhile, increasingly risks looking less like an independent route to justice and more like an overstretched appendage in a system trying to keep a lid on the fallout.

So is there any real difference between the Environment Agency and the FCA or FOS?

Yes, on paper.

In practice, the similarities are becoming impossible to ignore.

All three sit uncomfortably close to the industries they oversee. All three appear vulnerable to the logic of self-reporting, self-regulation and institutional caution. All three give the impression that scandal must become impossible to deny before meaningful action begins. And all three leave the public asking the same bleak question: are these watchdogs, or are they just damage-limitation departments with logos?

Because that is what this really comes down to.

A regulator that waits for catastrophe is not regulating.
A regulator that leans on firms to explain their own misconduct is not regulating.
A regulator that treats whistleblowers and professional challengers as the problem is not regulating.
A regulator that shrugs while criminality or unlawfulness is baked into a business model is not regulating.
And a regulator that protects the system from the consequences of wrongdoing more energetically than it protects the public from the wrongdoing itself has ceased to be a watchdog at all.

It has become part of the business model.

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March 19, 2026

Daniel Lee

We Financed It By Mistake – The Latest GAP Complaint Excuse

“We Financed It By Mistake” — The Latest GAP Complaint Excuse, And Why It’s Not Going To Fly

There’s a new contender in the GAP complaints Hall of Fame, and it’s a beauty.

Step forward Volkswagen Financial Services (trading as Skoda Financial Services), with a response which is essentially this:
“Yes, the GAP policy ended up on the finance agreement… but that was an error. Here’s the interest we earned back. And as for everything else, complain to the dealership.”

If you’re wondering whether that’s a genuine misunderstanding of responsibility, or a tactical attempt to exhaust consumers into giving up… join the queue.

The “clerical error” that somehow became a credit agreement

In its response to our complaint the lender acknowledges the GAP policy was financed, calls that financing “in error”, and offers a refund of the interest on the financed amount.

Then comes the getaway car: “We don’t sell/arrange/underwrite GAP, so we can’t investigate how it was sold, that’s for the dealer.”

But you do finance it, and benefit from doing so.

This isn’t just weak. It’s internally contradictory, and it isn’t a one off… it’s becoming a regular excuse.

Because once you’ve financed a product inside a regulated credit agreement, you are part of the transaction.

That’s the whole point of being the lender.

The lender tries to sound noble: “I have no intention of ‘passing the buck’…” …right before attempting to direct the complaint to the dealership as the party who will “address” the concerns.

“We financed it in error” is not a defence, it’s a confession

Let’s translate “we financed it in error” into plain English:

Your controls are so poor you didn’t know what you were lending for, or
You knew exactly what you were lending for, but you’d now like that to become “an error”, because it’s inconvenient.

Neither is a good look, and neither can be relied upon.

If a lender is paying a dealership based on an invoice, then the idea that optional extras and add-ons can just drift into the funded amount like a plastic bag in the wind raises obvious questions about record-keeping and governance.

So when we say this smells like either poor competence or tactical denial, we’re not being dramatic. We’re reading what’s in front of us.

It does appear that the lender has considered which is the worst option, and has concluded that having no controls over what it finances is better than being responsible for the sale of the GAP product.

An interesting choice to make.

Financing the GAP policy drags the whole mess into consumer credit territory

If the GAP cost is on the credit agreement / financed as part of the loan, the lender is contractually linked to it, and that matters because the Consumer Credit Act gives the court power to intervene where the relationship arising out of the agreement (or a related agreement) is unfair.

Section 140A is designed to let the court look at the whole relationship (terms, conduct, disclosures, commission, and what was (or wasn’t) done before the agreement was made).

Also worth remembering: section 56 of the Consumer Credit Act defines “antecedent negotiations” and treats pre-agreement negotiations by brokers/suppliers as part of the credit transaction framework.

So the idea that a lender can wash its hands because “the dealership said the words” is, at best, very optimistic.

The “refund the interest” trick: small cheque, big distraction

The lender’s move here is textbook:

Admit a narrow point (“we financed it in error”).
Pay a tiny sum (“here’s the interest”).
Deny the real complaint (“we can’t investigate sale / suitability / fair value / chain commission disclosure”).
Pray that the complaint will go away.

But the consumer’s resolution request wasn’t “please return the lender’s profit on the financed amount”. The issues raised include (among other things) suitability, evidence of understanding and acceptance, fair value, and chain commission transparency.

Refunding the interest attributed to the GAP product doesn’t answer any of that. It’s like setting fire to someone’s kitchen and then offering to replace the tea towel.

This is either ignorance, or strategy, and neither is acceptable

At this point, lenders have had more than enough time to learn a very simple concept:

If your name is on the credit agreement, and you financed the add-on, you don’t get to play “mere spectator”.

Some firms appear to be hoping that:

consumers won’t understand the difference between sale responsibility and credit responsibility,
they’ll be too busy to push back,
and they’ll accept the “go complain to the dealer” diversion as the end of the road.

Forwarding a complaint isn’t a magic wand.

If the lender has responsibility by way of financing a product, it must investigate and respond properly. It cannot outsource that duty to a dealership as a convenient escape route.

And if a lender is effectively admitting it didn’t properly check what it financed, that’s not “remediation”. That’s a red flag.

They won’t make these claims go away. They’ll just keep trying different excuses. And we’ll keep calling them out.

Poor complaint handling and the FCA asleep at the wheel

Lenders have a long proven history of failing to handle complaints in accordance with their regulatory obligations, but it is examples such as this which results in consumers becoming reliant upon professional representatives.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is regularly found asleep at the wheel, and it is no surprise that it is currently playing catch up (again), with respect to products such as GAP.

It is almost always professional representatives that shine a light on scandals, much to the embarrassment of the FCA.

And the FCA doesn’t appear to take kindly to being embarrassed (although it should be used to it), so it targets representation rather than the firms that cause the scandal in the first instance.

GAP mis-selling is becoming the latest scandal, whether the FCA like it or not.

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February 27, 2026

Daniel Lee

How the FCA Turned Motor Finance Redress Into Damage Limitation

There’s a moment in most national scandals when you start to realise the system isn’t trying to fix the problem, it’s trying to manage the fallout. In the UK’s motor finance commission scandal, that is happening now.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has publicly acknowledged that “many firms broke its rules” and didn’t properly tell customers about commission arrangements, subsequently deemed unlawful by the Supreme Court. Yet what’s emerging is not a full-throttled attempt to put consumers back where they would have been without the unlawful misconduct. What’s emerging is a damage-limitation exercise dressed up as a redress scheme.

And it is no coincidence that this is happening since 2023, when Parliament handed the FCA a responsiblity to boost competitiveness and growth.

But when you hand a consumer protection regulator a “growth” mandate, you are handing responsibility to people who have no experience or expertise in how to boost any economy.

More concerning, you create an immediate conflict of interest.

The uncomfortable truth about the FCA’s “growth” mandate

To be fair, it is impossible for the FCA to keep all sides happy.

However, what has happened is that lobbying from the banking sector has rocketed, seeking to take advantage of an organisation that has been handed an impossible task of boosting growth with little know-how.

The FCA has listened to and been led by the banking sector as an industry that purports to know how to boost growth and competition (financial crash anyone?).

The result is a regulator that puts the wishes of those it regulates above those it is responsible for protecting.

If you want to know whether that tension is real, look at the motor finance redress proposal and ask a basic question:

Does it feel like an uncompromising consumer protection response, or a calibrated settlement designed to avoid spooking the lenders?

Motor finance – from “you paid too much” to “be grateful you get anything”

The FCA’s own historical work (prior to 2023) on motor finance didn’t mince words about consumer harm.

When it eventually moved to ban discretionary commission arrangements (DCAs) — arrangements that incentivised brokers to hike interest rates to earn more commission — it highlighted the scale of detriment. In its impact assessment, the FCA estimated that on a typical £10,000 motor finance agreement, higher dealership commission under one form of DCA can result in the customer paying around £1,100 more in interest charges over a four-year term.

That was the regulator’s own maths.

Fast-forward to today (post 2023!), and the FCA’s ‘proposed’ compensation scheme now talks in terms of an average payout of £700 per agreement, and that figure includes compensatory interest.

Read that again.

FCA’s own prior analysis: £1,100 extra interest paid by consumers on a typical deal (in at least one DCA model), not including compensatory interest.
FCA’s current scheme comms: £700 average compensation including compensatory interest.

That’s not a mathematical error, that’s a policy choice.

And it’s not happening in a vacuum. The FCA’s redress proposals openly admit that because the scheme must be workable at scale, “not everyone will get everything they would like from a scheme”. Conveniently, the people least likely to “get everything they would like” are the people who were overcharged.

Coincidence? Let that sink in.

Interest is where the real haircut happens

You can tell how serious a redress scheme is by how it treats time, because time is money.

Historically, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) applied a standard 8% simple interest rate on compensation awards. It was part of ensuring consumers weren’t left worse off simply because companies unfairly held their money for years, and it acted as a small deterrent against mis-selling.

Now look at where we are:

1) The FCA’s proposed scheme interest rate is “Bank of England base rate + 1%”.

The FCA’s own consumer information says that under its current proposals, compensation would include interest calculated as the average base rate per year, plus 1%, from the date of overpayment to the date compensation is paid.

By way of reference, the Supreme Court ordered “interest at a commercial rate”, widely accepted in that particular case to be circa 7%.

2) The FOS changed its own interest approach from 1st January 2026.

The FOS has published a policy statement confirming it has also moved away from the historic 8% standard and instead applies a time-weighted average of Bank of England base rate + 1 percentage point for “pre-determination” interest.

So the FCA designs a redress scheme with base+1 interest… and the ombudsman shifts to base+1 interest.

If you don’t see the pattern, you’re not looking hard enough.

This isn’t neutral modernisation. It is a system-wide recalibration downward, exactly in the direction that reduces liability for firms and reduces recovery for consumers.

Adding friction, the introduction of fees for representatives

If you want fewer complaints, not by solving misconduct but by reducing the number of people able to pursue it, you don’t need to ban complaints. You just need to make complaining more difficult.

That’s exactly what has happened with professional representation at the FOS.

From 1st April 2025, case fees are charged where a complaint is referred by a professional representative and exceeds the annual free-case allowance.

The Financial Times reported that after the fee was introduced, complaints volumes fell, largely because fewer cases were being submitted by professional representatives, and noted concerns from consumer advocates that the fees may limit access.

This is the crucial point, fees change behaviour. They always do. And when behaviour changes, the people who suffer are the least confident, least resourced, and most vulnerable, the ones least able to navigate firms, deadlines, evidence requests, and legal threats on their own.

And it’s especially concerning because the “common sense” alternative was staring everyone in the face:

If you want to deter weak cases charge the losing party. Yes, it is that simple.

Abby Thomas, the FOS leadership crisis, and what it says about the “ecosystem”

The Financial Ombudsman Service isn’t operating in calm waters, it rarely does. It’s been in leadership turmoil and Parliament has been forced to drag information out of it.

Abby Thomas’s departure as FOS Chief Executive/Chief Ombudsman was announced on 6th February 2025. The House of Commons Treasury Committee later concluded, based on documents it reviewed that the FOS board dismissed her after “fundamental disagreements” and a “collapse in confidence”. MPs also criticised the chair’s conduct during scrutiny and stressed the need for proper accountability.

You don’t have to invent conspiracies to see what this suggests.

Common sense lost out to implementing a deterrent to complaints, and anybody that stood in the way was maneuvered.

PPI proved redress is restorative and economically meaningful

The FCA and the general public have constantly been fed the line that strong (fair) redress harms the economy. That paying consumers back is a “drag”, and would reduce competition and access to borrowing.

Yet the FCA’s own data shows that banks paid £38.3 billion in PPI refunds and compensation (a sum widely described as the largest UK consumer redress exercise).

Did the country collapse because households got money back they should never have been charged in the first place?

No. People used it to clear debts, stabilise their finances, pay for essentials and, yes, spend.

In an era where cost-of-living pressures have battered households’ incomes and security, returning money to people who were unfairly charged isn’t just “compensation”. It’s repair.

And repair is not anti-growth. It’s pro-household resilience.

The backfire is predictable, watered-down redress fuels litigation

Here’s the part the FCA and FOS seem determined not to learn from history… when people believe the “official” route won’t deliver fair outcomes, they don’t politely accept it. They reject it and seek alternatives.

The FCA has suggested it wants an orderly scheme, but the proposed scheme is now so heavily weighted against justice that it will end up creating the opposite.

The scheme will be ignored, and the courts will be deluged with claims as the only reliable route to fair redress.

What this should have been

A regulator that truly believed in consumer protection (and wasn’t conflicted) would do three things, unapologetically:

Pay back the full economic harm, not a “reasonable simplification” that happens to land below earlier estimates of detriment.
Use an interest approach that reflects real deprivation and deterrence, not a conveniently low benchmark that aligns with a pro-industry “orderly” outcome.
Design the complaints ecosystem around access, not around friction, and apply a “loser pays” principle rather than taxing representation.

Instead, we’ve been sold a story that growth requires quiet compromises; that fairness is negotiable; that victims should accept a reduced payout and move on.

Shame isn’t too strong a word

The government chose to add “growth” into the FCA’s mandate. The FCA chose to interpret “orderly” redress in a way that repeatedly softens the outcome for firms. Both the FCA and FOS have shifted interest in a direction that will reduce what consumers receive, while also introducing fees that change who can bring cases and how.

All of this may be presented as modernisation. But to millions of people who paid more than they should have, and who were not properly told why, it looks like a system protecting itself and seeking the approval of government for the responsibility handed to it.

Shame on the government for creating the conflict. And shame on the FCA and FOS for exploiting it, or worse, for pretending it isn’t there.

...

February 23, 2026

Daniel Lee

The FCA Radio Ad That Tells Consumers to Wait

The FCA Radio Ad That Tells Consumers to “Wait” (While the Clock Keeps Ticking)

There’s a new Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) financed radio advert doing the rounds telling consumers three things:

Wait
Don’t use a representative
If you want “100% of the facts”, go to the FCA

If you’re the sort of person who enjoys irony, you’ll love this advert. If you’re a consumer with a potential motor finance claim, you should be deeply concerned.

Because in my view, those lines are misleading by implication, misleading by omission, and perfectly designed to cause consumer harm, all while wearing a high-vis jacket labelled “We’re helping!”.

And yes, this is exactly the kind of advert somebody might reasonably consider reporting to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)!

1) “Wait” for what, exactly?

The FCA’s own consumer page states plainly that there is no compensation scheme in place yet, unless of course the consultation period is merely a box ticking exercise (let’s not go there).

So “wait” is not guidance. It’s based upon an idea, an ongoing discussion that may not see the light of day.

Worse, the FCA has regularly told consumers the opposite of “wait” in black and white. It has actively encouraged consumers to “complain now”, and under its current proposals those who complain before any scheme starts are likely to be dealt with sooner.

So if an advert is nudging people to sit on their hands, it’s pushing them away from the very action the regulator says could get them assessed sooner.

And while the FCA has paused and extended complaint handling timelines, that doesn’t magically stop time existing for other routes that are available to consumers (including court timetables and limitation arguments). The FCA itself has confirmed the pause lifts on 31st May 2026, and it will announce whether it will go ahead with a scheme by the end of March 2026.

What is becoming clear, is that the Redress Scheme is in serious danger of becoming an unforgettable white elephant, with representatives guiding consumers to fairer redress via the courts… and the FCA seems to be doing all it can to stop that from happening at any cost.

2) “Don’t use a representative” is not consumer protection. It’s crowd control

Let’s be clear… there are good representatives and there are bad representative. Consumers should be careful.

But a blanket “don’t use a representative” message is, in my opinion, reckless, because it implies representation is unnecessary in all cases, and it fails to explain the trade-offs.

Even the FCA’s own page takes a more nuanced position. It says you won’t need a CMC or law firm for any scheme and warns about fees, but it also recognises people do use them and explains what happens if you cancel.

The advert chooses a blunt instruction instead of providing balance, and the benefits of using representation.

Consumers choose representation for multiple reasons, not least because of one mis-selling scandal after another, lenders failing to handle valid complaints fairly, and a seemingly weak regulator that is uncomfortably close to those it pertains to regulate, which has resulted in a complete lack of trust.

If you’re going to broadcast an instruction that could materially affect how consumers pursue redress, you’re already wandering into BCAP territory: don’t materially mislead (3.1), don’t omit material information (3.2), and hold evidence for objective claims (3.9).
(BCAP Code: Section 3)

3) “100% of the facts are on the FCA website” is a huge claim, and it needs substantiating

That “100% of the facts” line is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Yes, the FCA’s consumer page is helpful in parts.

But here’s the issue, the FCA is trying to steer behaviour.

It promotes a lender-run scheme as “simpler”, warns consumers they could end up with less “after legal fees”, and builds an entire comms approach around keeping consumers inside the scheme perimeter

Quite possibly because the scheme, in its current design, is heavily weighted in favour of lenders and allows the FCA some embarrassment for being asleep at the wheel in the first instance.

And then there’s the compensation point, which is absolutely central:

The FCA’s proposal is that simple interest would be paid based on the annual average Bank of England base rate + 1%.
(FCA Consultation Paper CP25/27 (PDF))
But the Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson (part of the conjoined appeals) involved repayment of commission with interest at an “appropriate commercial rate”.
(UK Supreme Court: Press Summary (UKSC 2024/0157))
Bank of England base rate + 1% cannot be considered as an appropriate commercial rate.
The proposal does not put many consumers back into the position of being refunded every penny that they were overcharged as a result of unlawful commission arrangements.
The proposal makes assumptions on what would be considered to be unfair levels of commission at court, without any legal precedent to rely upon.

So if an advert tells consumers “100% of the facts are on the FCA website”, while the FCA’s own messaging frames the scheme as the obvious route and doesn’t exactly shout from the rooftops that courts can approach interest and valid claim criteria differently, that “100%” claim starts to look less like information and more like… marketing.

And marketing, on the radio, is exactly what BCAP regulates.

4) The scheme is lender-run, and the advert glosses over the obvious conflict

Under the FCA’s current proposal, lenders should contact consumers:

within 3 months if the consumer has already complained
within 6 months if they haven’t

The FCA acknowledges the practical problem if a lender doesn’t have your details, you may not be contacted and so you’d have a year from when the scheme starts to make a claim.

That’s not a minor footnote. That’s the whole ballgame for millions of people who financed a vehicle years ago, moved twice, and can’t even find the original paperwork without a séance.

Yet the advert’s “wait” message effectively encourages consumers to rely on the same institutions that benefited from the unlawful commission structures to (a) find them, (b) assess them, and (c) pay them.

If that doesn’t deserve a raised eyebrow, I don’t know what does.

Why this is ASA-complaint territory

If someone wanted to complain to the ASA, the argument (in plain English) is:

The advert creates a misleading overall impression that waiting is safe and sensible. (BCAP 3.1)
It omits material information, like the fact there’s no scheme in place yet, that complaining now may be beneficial, and that there are legitimate routes outside any scheme (including court). (BCAP 3.2)
“100% of the facts” is an objective-sounding claim that must be capable of substantiation. (BCAP 3.9)
Broadcast ads must be prepared with a sense of responsibility to the audience and to society. (BCAP 1.2)

References:

And Ofcom is clear, radio advert content complaints go to the ASA (except political advertising)

Final thought

This advert doesn’t feel like consumer guidance. It feels like a behavioural nudge to stay calm, don’t get help, and only read what we put in front of you.

If that’s genuinely the intention, it’s grotesque. If it’s not the intention, it’s still dangerous—because consumer harm doesn’t wait politely just because a radio voice told it to.

And neither does the clock.

...

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PPI proved redress is restorative and economically meaningful

The backfire is predictable, watered-down redress fuels litigation

What this should have been

Shame isn’t too strong a word

The FCA Radio Ad That Tells Consumers to “Wait” (While the Clock Keeps Ticking)

1) “Wait” for what, exactly?

2) “Don’t use a representative” is not consumer protection. It’s crowd control

3) “100% of the facts are on the FCA website” is a huge claim, and it needs substantiating

4) The scheme is lender-run, and the advert glosses over the obvious conflict

Why this is ASA-complaint territory

Final thought

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