In a major development this month, the FCA announced the banning of former Credit Suisse vice president Detelina Subeva from the UK financial services industry following a US criminal conviction.
According to an FCA press release: “Ms Subeva is the third former Credit Suisse employee banned for lacking integrity, following their US convictions for conspiracy to commit money laundering connected to corrupt loans to the Republic of Mozambique.”
She had already pleaded guilty in the US for her role in a conspiracy to commit money laundering back in May 2019, including “accepting and retaining $200,000 from one of her co-conspirators in unlawful kickbacks in connection with the loans.”
The FCA had already banned two other individuals, Andrew Pearse and Surjan Singh, back in February this year following criminal convictions in the US in the same case.
The FCA has announced it has imposed restrictions on wealth management firm Strowz Ltd in response to significant concerns.
In a press release, the regulator has said the firm “cannot undertake any regulated activity, accept any further client money or move or facilitate the movement of client assets or client money without our express permission.”
“The firm is also required to keep assets in the business and notify us about any additional bank accounts it intends to open,” the press release adds.
The FCA says the restrictions were imposed after serious concerns were revealed that the firm did not meet the minimum requirements a firm must meet in order to carry out regulated financial activities in the UK.
And in another enforcement action the FCA has said Business Agent Limited (trading as NextCrowd and NextFin) has entered administration on May 8, 2025.
Louise Longley and Julian Pitts, both of Begbies Traynor, were appointed as joint administrators.
According to a press release: “Business Agent Limited operated the NextCrowd websiteLink is external through which it arranged investments. On 22 July 2024, we placed restrictions on Business Agent Limited following concerns about its failings related to nextcrowd.co.uk.” More details of the restrictions imposed on the firm can be found on the FCA website.
Regulation
In an ongong effort to modernize the way it works, the FCA has said it has streamlined its complaints data reporting requirements for firms.
In a press release, the regulator has said: “Ten thousand firms will find it simpler to submit data on the complaints they receive under our new proposals to improve the complaints reporting process.”
The plan is to consolidate five returns into one, which the FCA hopes will improve the quality of the data it receives. As a result any potential harm to customers can be detected faster.
Elsewhere, the FCA has said it has “published proposals for issuing stablecoins, crypto custody and financial resilience of cryptoasset firms, to support a safe, competitive sector.”
The proposals are the latest step in the regulator’s efforts to come up with a regulatory framework for digital assets, and follows other discussion papers and roundtables.
Given the importance and usefulness of stablecoins, the FCA has said it will “explore adding a specific focus on stablecoins to its innovation services in the coming months.”
Also last week, the FCA announced that it was “reviewing and updating the requirements, directions and limitations applied to over 9,000 firms.”
The regulator has said: “This follows a review to check that the data we hold:
- “is still accurate;
- “reflects the current wording we use for requirements, directions and limitations;
- “reflects any changes to legislation and firms’ business models since they were imposed.”
The regulator has said: “We found that some of our data was out of date, had been superseded by new content or needed small errors correcting,”
The FCA has responded “to the announcement of a survey on asset allocation as part of the Treasury’s Pension Investment Review.”
“Ensuring consumers get good value from their pension savings is an important goal. This lies at the heart of the work we have been doing to introduce a value for money (VFM) framework,” the watchdog has said.
The FCA plans to contact firms and ask for data in early 2026 so that it can “better understand how firms think about asset allocation and refine our proposed rules.”
Media
The FCA said last week it had “apologised to people who invested in Basset & Gold plc and Basset & Gold Ltd for failures in the way we dealt with the firms.”
The regulator says it has carefully considered the complaints received in relation to the above firms and the way it dealt with them, and as a result it has “decided to uphold complaints about failings” in its:
- authorization of B&G Finance Ltd;
- supervision of Basset & Gold plc, Basset & Gold Ltd and B&G Finance Ltd.
It has not upheld the complaints about:
- the authorization of Basset & Gold plc and Basset & Gold Ltd;
- a failure to stop the sale of Basset & Gold plc mini-bonds at an earlier time or a failure to act on a specific warning about Basset & Gold plc.
The FCA has published the results of a latest survey which reveals that one in 10 people have no cash savings at all, and that 21% of the people surveyed had less than £1,000 ($1,350) in savings.
The survey has also revealed that “one in four people in the UK have low financial resilience, meaning that they have missed payments, are struggling to keep up with commitments, or don’t have savings to help them through difficulties.”
Speeches
Dominic Holland, director of market oversight at the FCA, delivered a speech at the Association of Corporate Treasurers Annual Conference 20 May 2025.
The speech focused on collaboration between the regulator and the business industry, reducing the reporting burden faced by firms, fuelling economic growth and embracing technology and innovation.
“We cannot guarantee thriving conditions for growth on our own. We are one part of the puzzle. What we can do is create certainty, remove burdens and ensure that we are consistently challenging ourselves to help facilitate growth,” Holland said in his concluding remarks.
