The Financial Services Compensation Scheme has said it wants to work more closely with insolvency practitioners.
Its chief executive Mark Neale said the FSCS’s relationship with insolvency practitioners was critical to protecting consumers.
He said the FSCS relies on insolvency practitioners for accurate data about firms which end up in default and claims against them at the FSCS, but he predicted that it could rely on them in other respects as well.
Mr Neale said: “We might, for example, need to be able to access a failed firm’s own systems in order to compensate consumers in an efficient and timely way.
“All this explains why we and the Bank of England seek to maintain an open dialogue with the IP community and jointly host an annual event for IPs.”
Mr Neale gave the example of the recent failures of broker/dealers such as MF Global and Alpari, when the FSCS turned to insolvency practitioners to confirm customers’ balances.
He said: “The relationship with the IP is, from FSCS’ point of view, critical to an orderly resolution and to the protection of consumers.
“Central to this relationship is the provision of data.
“In the case of a bank or building society failure, we rely on the IP to see to it that a fit-for-purpose single customer view (SCV) file is provided to us on time.
“This file, which contains information about the aggregate balances of all the failed firms’ depositors, underpins our ability to get people’s money back to them in seven days.
“We have also worked with IPs in a number of recent credit union failures to identify vulnerable customers – customers receiving benefits, for example – for whom we’ve made special arrangements to maintain access to funds.”
damian.fantato@ft.com
