A complainant who thought emails from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) were spam has been told to pay their overdue fees.
The individual complained to the Complaints Commissioner after they applied to cancel their authorisation in September 2017 but the FCA said they would still have to pay their fees for the full year as they had not cancelled by the 31 March deadline.
The person was then charged a late payment fee and debt collectors were eventually contacted to enforce both the annual fee and the late payment fee.
The complainant did not believe the money was owed and said they were unaware of attempts to contact them, despite emails from the FCA, which they considered suspicious.
Antony Townsend, the complaints commissioner, said: "It is correct that you should not respond to suspicious emails giving out your banking and personal details, but you could and should have contacted the FCA to find out if the fee notifications and demands originated from them, especially as you had signed yourself up for online invoicing which means that all correspondence including letters is sent by email.
"It is my view that the FCA followed the correct procedure and charged you for the yearly fee in line with their fee rules. As such, I am unable to uphold this element of your complaint."
The complainant also said the lack of an FCA record of them attending its London head offices in February 2018 was proof the regulator was unlikely to have kept a good record of all its other attempts to contact their firm, therefore they can't prove they contacted them so many times.
In response, the FCA said it only keeps a record of planned visits and visitors who are permitted access to their main building, not those who remain in reception.
Mr Townsend said: "I accept the FCA’s explanation that they do not keep a log of all individuals who attend the reception desk at their head office but are not there for a pre-arranged meeting and are not admitted to the building. This seems to be a reasonable practice.
"I do not believe that the lack of a record of your visit at reception is an indication that they did not keep a good record of the attempts to get on touch with you. In fact, you admit that you received correspondence from the FCA but you did not respond."
Mr Townsend also highlighted that the FCA provides information on its website about how firms need to inform the regulator of their plans to cancel their authorisation by 31 March of any given year if they wish to avoid paying the following year's full fees.
He did not uphold the complaint, but the FCA agreed to waive the £250 late payment fee if the complainant agreed to pay the outstanding annual fee within 14 days.
damian.fantato@ft.com
