A career civil servant before her current role, she spent her past six years in administration as head of savings and investments at the Treasury, before taking early retirement and her current role.
She said: “I was always getting into trouble for being challenging and being quite difficult. I actually wasn’t a very civil service-type of person.”
It is perhaps one of the reasons why she was appointed to be chair of the panel, joining in July last year, where she says part of the role of the FSCP is to question.
Ms Lewis added: “We’re about helping the FCA do its job better but sometimes that does mean challenging and sometimes it means disagreeing.”
The FSCP is a panel of experts drawn from the media, marketing, law and campaigning, all with a consumer champion bent and a background in standing up for the little man.
A statutory body, the FSCP is currently looking at, for example, the future of financial services regulation, the effectiveness of the FCA at conduct level and decumulation – it published a very critical report of the annuity market at the end of last year.
There are 11 members on the panel, including Ms Lewis, and the membership process is through open competition.
She takes her role as being the independent, free-thinking consumer advocate seriously. For example, she does not see auto-enrolment as being the answer to the savings crisis – in fact quite the opposite.
Ms Lewis said: “Auto-enrolment doesn’t increase people’s financial capability, it does the opposite by taking the decision away from somebody.”
She said that people will assume that their pension will be enough, simply because they are paying into it, but added: “It won’t be enough unless the government does something about employer contributions. This group of people will be more vulnerable. We are doing a huge disservice.
“If governments want to shift the risks from government to individuals then they need to be more transparent about what the deal is. No government minister is saying: This is not enough.
“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, given that people are going to have to save and it’s not a bad way of doing it, but it means it’s one less thing for people to think about.”
The problem she says is that people do not want to engage with their finances – “It's either very, very stressful, or very, very dull” – and no one is really stepping into the breach to help people out. The banks will not help out, as every conversation is directed towards a sale, and the Money Advice Service does not have the presence to contribute meaningfully.
Even financial advisers are compromised. Ms Lewis: “Advisers are salesmen. They will do some financial planning but they’re finding the right investment product.
“RDR has been good at increasing professionalism but has put the price up and most IFAs won’t get out of bed unless you’ve got £50,000 to play with.
“When people are talking about advice they are talking about their finances in general – what is the difference between a stocks and shares Isa and a cash Isa – whereas ‘advice’ has got a very specific regulatory meaning.”
One of the areas she is quite concerned about is an unintended consequence of RDR, the non-advised sector, especially execution-only platforms.
She said: “People are being guided through a process that looks akin to ‘advice’ and may even end up with a product, but they’ve chosen that product themselves, and they haven’t a clue about what they’ve done and they don’t realise they’re not protected.”
Aside from Ms Lewis’s time at the Treasury, she is also involved with Step Change, the debt charity, and she has been a consultant to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, submitting written evidence to the Treasury select committee on Mas. Perhaps predictably she has a low opinion of the banks.
She said: “Wouldn’t it be nice if you could trust your bank? I think banks can make money and service customers but they’ve been allowed for so long to just make money at the expense of customers that shareholders have come to expect some ridiculous returns on capital.”
Ms Lewis said the track record for the banks is just to skim off the customer as much money as possible, whether it is PPI or some other product, adding: “People think it’s a mission to change your bank account, and you tend to be really angry with them before you up sticks and go. People divorce more often than they change their bank accounts.”
She said it was not enough that the banks receive bad publicity, despite being delighted at the £28m fine for Lloyds at the end of last year for bad sales practices as very few people would have acknowledged the fine, or even heard of the FCA.
The one bright spot on the horizon is financial education in schools. Ms Lewis described this as a “huge leap forward”. It is not designed to turn children into hedge fund managers, as some critics suggest, she says, but will get “children thinking about money and engaging in risk, and looking at money which will help in the long run.”
However she added: “That will take 20 years”. Meanwhile, as she enhances her reputation of “speaking truth to power” – someone applied to the FSCP for this reason – so she will continue to fight for the underdog and speak up for the financially naive.
Melanie Tringham is features editor of Financial Adviser
CV: Sue Lewis
December 2013 to present - Member, European Commission financial services user group
July 2013 to present - Financial Services Consumer Panel, chair
2012 to present - Consumer advocate member, Chartered Insurance Institute professional standards board
2012 to present - Step Change, trustee
2011 to present - Consultant to OECD
2010 to present - Personal Finance Education Group, trustee
2005 - 2011 Treasury, head of savings and investments
2001 - 2005 department for education, deputy director, Sure Start and children and young people’s unit
2000 - 2001 Cabinet Office, deputy director, women’s unit
1999 - 2000 Treasury, head of Cruickshank banking review
1997 - 1998 Treasury, head of training and development
