Financial Regulator crackdown – 100,000 websites to be inspected a day for fraud

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have commented they are now using data strategies to clamp down on fraud faster and have been requesting hosts close down scams sites and advertisements . Last year 564 adverts were removed from websites, this is a large increase from previous years which was half that figure. This shows an increase on detection of scam adverts/websites and that they are being taken down promptly.

The FCA are the conduct regulator for around 51,000 financial services firms and financial markets in the UK. The most important role of the FCA is to prevent misconduct by financial companies.

• The FCA plans to invest heavily in its use of data in 2022/23, recruiting a significant number of skilled roles, across Artificial Intelligence, analytics and data science, as well as cloud engineering and digital technology, adding to the 100 it has recruited since 2020.
• The FCA is using advanced analytics and new sources of data to identify inappropriate financial adverts.
• Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the FCA has developed and implemented a sanctions screening tool to support the monitoring of the effectiveness of a firm’s controls in identifying organisations or individuals that have been sanctioned.
• The FCA will provide its staff with a dashboard for all the financial companies it regulates and sectors it oversees. This will make it easier to identify and focus on the highest risk cases.

Jessica Rusu – Chief Data, Information and Intelligence Officer at the FCA commented “Better use of data means we can be more proactive and find and stop harm faster”. “We are continuing to improve our data, technology and capabilities to act decisively in consumers interests, while making it easier for firms to report to us.”