How to make a Freedom of Information request

We already publish a lot of information about the firms we regulate and authorise. We also give details of those firms which are not authorised and individuals you should avoid.

Much of the information we hold about firms (and individuals) is information we have received during our day-to-day regulatory work. For example, this could be information from consumers, firms and other people we regulate, journalists, other regulators, the police and other law enforcement agencies and the government.

This is ‘confidential information’, under section 348 FSMA, and is generally exempt from disclosure, which means we cannot give it to you. This could be information the firm has given us, anything other organisations may have told us, or any information consumers have given us about the firm.

Unless the information we have received is already publicly available or we have the consent of the relevant ‘person’ (an individual, company or partnership) we are forbidden to share it with the public. Find out more about what information we can share with you[1].

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If you want to find out whether a specific individual is authorised by us, check the Financial Services Register[2], which lists all the firms and individuals we regulate.We also publish details of those firms which are not authorised by us[3] and individuals you should avoid[3].

We can’t give other information about a specific individual. Also some information we hold about a living, identifiable individual may comprise the personal data of that individual.

If your request is for personal information we hold about an individual who is someone other than yourself, we will not be able to disclose it to you without the consent of the relevant individual.

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You can see details of who we have investigated and the outcome of our investigations in the Final Notices[4] section of our website.

We don’t usually make public the fact that we are investigating someone. This is partly to protect the effectiveness of our investigation, as publicity might encourage people to destroy or hide evidence. And partly because someone’s reputation can be damaged by us announcing an investigation.

But once we take formal enforcement action, we generally publish details on our website in the form of a ‘Decision’ or ‘Final’ Notice and associated press statement.  

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We publish information about the time we take to either approve or recommend refusing an application to be authorised[5].

We also publish details about Significant Influence Function (SIF) applications for approval[6] from FCA solo-regulated firms and other statistics.

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You may find the answer to your question here as we publish a lot of information about how we spend money[7].

On this website you’ll find details in our Business Plan and budget, the overall costs of public events we have organised and summary details of allowances and expenses claimed by our chairman and executive members of our board.

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We already publish details of the complaints received by banks, insurers, lenders and other firms, and what those complaints were about. See the latest data and the most complained about firms and financial products[8].

If we are asked if we have ever received a complaint about a specific firm or individual, we are unable to comment.  

We do not investigate individual consumer complaints – that is the job of the Financial Ombudsman Service[9].  

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You may be interested in seeing responses to previous FoI requests we have responded to which we think are of wider public interest. See our Disclosure Log[10].   

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Thank you. Please complete the following Freedom of information request[11] form.