UK's Financial Services Authority Fines Scottish Equitable Plc £2.8m And Announces Redress Of £60m For Customers

Date 16/12/2010

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The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined Scottish Equitable Plc £2.8m for causing significant consumer detriment through poor administrative procedures. Scottish Equitable Plc will pay consumer redress of about £60 million, of which £30 million will have been paid by the end of the year.

In 2009, Scottish Equitable informed the FSA that it had identified around 300 issues relating to problems in administering its policies.

These problems included:

• not issuing around 238,000 policyholder documents;
• incorrectly calculating guaranteed minimum pension payments and future benefits of 774 customers;
• failing to identify errors in calculating rebates to charges on pension policies for 25,000 policies;
• not matching Department of Work and Pensions contributions to personal pensions for around 2,500 customers; and
• failing to trace around 200,000 policyholders who had moved without informing Scottish Equitable of their new address.

The total consumer detriment from the 300 issues identified by Scottish Equitable Plc is estimated to be £60m. Scottish Equitable Plc is undertaking a redress programme to compensate customers who missed out on payments or benefits that they were entitled to or who were disadvantaged by its actions. Scottish Equitable Plc has already started to compensate consumers and will have paid £30m in redress by the end of 2010.

Margaret Cole, FSA managing director of enforcement and financial crime said:

"The redress package is significant news for the customers of Scottish Equitable Plc and I am pleased that £30m will already have been paid back by the end of the month.

"This case shows the importance of getting customer administrative procedures right and fixing them quickly when they go wrong. This is a key part of treating customers fairly.

"By letting the issues build up over such a long period, Scottish Equitable Plc made it even more difficult to fix the problems and this led to delays in getting compensation to customers."

Scottish Equitable Plc qualified for a 30% discount under the FSA's settlement discount scheme. Without the discount the fine would have been £4m. The FSA has taken into account that Scottish Equitable Plc co-operated with the FSA and has committed substantial resources and time to rectifying the issues identified.

Background

1. The Final Notice for Scottish Equitable Plc can be found on the FSA website.
2. The FSA regulates the financial services industry and has four objectives under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000: maintaining market confidence; securing the appropriate degree of protection for consumers; fighting financial crime; and contributing to the protection and enhancement of the stability of the UK financial system.