The Financial Conduct Authority said it brought in paralegals after facing significant delays in its response to freedom of information requests.
As reported by FTAdviser earlier this year, some individuals were receiving responses to FOI requests almost a year later, far beyond the statutory 20 working days.
Speaking at the FCA’s annual general meeting yesterday (October 12), Emily Sheppard, executive director for authorisations, admitted that the regulator did have some “challenges and delays”, particularly in its data subject access request (DSAR) team last year.
Sheppard said: “The actions we took were to increase some capacity in that team a little bit, some of it through a third party so we've had paralegals brought in, in order to just help get through that burden.
“We're investing in some technology there, particularly around management information, so we know where things are.”
A DSAR is a request asking a business to know what personal information of theirs has been collected and stored as well as how it is being used.
They can also use a DSAR to ask that certain actions be taken with their data.
Generally an organisation must respond to the DSAR request within one calendar month and if it requires more time or the request is complex, it will have a maximum of three calendar months.
As of September, Sheppard said it had just two cases of DSAR that had breached the time limit.
“Now while we aspire to absolutely do it within the 30 and 90 days, there are occasionally some cases where the volume is 10s of 1000s of pages that have to be read,” she said.
“I'm not saying that we're going to be 100 per cent on this because I cannot promise that but we are certainly a lot more on top of it now we have that capacity and we have that focus back again.”
Later the same day, during the press conference, Sheppard said the FCA has data scientists to help with the requests and work with the team.
She explained that sometimes if the information is in a single database and it is just a data extraction, it can be quick to get the answer.
“However, normally you have to go through everything as well to make sure that the data extraction has pulled out the right information, that it hasn't got some false positives in there or anything like that,” she said.
“Simple data extraction is rarely the answer for FOIs.”
Jessica Rusu, chief data, information and intelligence officer, added: “We're doing a lot around data science and the data science teams are scattered across the organisation and they support absolutely every area of the business.
“It's an area of growing work for us.”
During the AGM yesterday, the FCA said it is looking at the Blackmore Bond scandal in the same “forensic detail” as it has done with the London Capital & Finance scandal.
The FCA’s executive director of enforcement and market oversight, Mark Steward said the regulator’s focus in relation to the bond scandal has been focused on the way in which those financial promotions operated.
At the press conference, the FCA also said it is working with The Investing and Saving Alliance and the Association of British Insurers to try and gain some practical examples of areas where the advice and guidance boundary is not working.
sonia.rach@ft.com
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