Whistleblowers concerned about conduct in and culture of financial firms

Dr Anne Sammon of Pinsent Masons was commenting after the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Bank of England (BoE) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) all published new data on whistleblowing reports they had received.

According to the FCA, it received 253 new whistleblowing reports between April and June 2024, down from the 298 new reports it received during the first three months of this year and the 300 it received during the same April to June period in 2023.

Most of the new whistleblowing reports – 135 – raised issues of compliance, but 92 made allegations pertaining to ‘fitness propriety’, which in essence means those reports called into question the conduct of senior individuals within firms. A further 78 reports contained allegations about the culture of the relevant organisation.

The BoE and PRA data was aggregated and covered the period from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024. They said they received 240 so-called public interest disclosures during that year, of which they treated 228 as “protected disclosures” – a concept that is defined within the Employment Rights Act 1996 and to which certain statutory protections attach to encourage workers to come forward to report cases of serious wrongdoing or wrongdoing.

In the case of the reports received by the BoE and PRA, 14 “contributed to significant regulatory or supervisory activity”. One of the anonymised case studies the regulators provided highlighted that a senior manager had been removed from a financial services firm following allegations of sexual misconduct.

The FCA said it closed 382 whistleblowing reports between April and June 2024 and that in 25 of those cases there had been “significant action” taken “to manage harm”. Such action, it said, can include enforcement action or restricting a firm’s permissions or an individual’s approval.

Sammon said: “With the FCA expected to publish new rules on non-financial conduct in the near future, we may see even more whistleblowing reports on these issues – and it is something that firms need to consider carefully, both in terms of training and ensuring that issues that are raised internally are dealt with appropriately, such that individuals do not feel the need to blow the whistle to the regulator.”