Regulator to overhaul register search function

During the question and answer session at the watchdog's annual public meeting in Westminster today (11 September), a member of the audience urged the FCA to take action to improve their register to allow the public to find a financial adviser.

Jonathan Davidson, executive director of supervision – retail and authorisations at the FCA, said he recognised more work was needed to make sure the public could be confident that they were dealing with someone appropriate to help them.

Mr Davidson said: "We take this very seriously.

"We have invested a lot in the Scam Smart campaign. A key part of that is to look at the register and make sure the firm they are dealing with is a registered firm

"We have been working to make it (the register) more useable and make it more searchable to check does the firm exist and are they who they say they are."

Mr Davidson said in the next few days the FCA will be rolling out a trial of a new search function for the register.

He also said as a result of the senior manager regime being rolled out to financial advisers the watchdog is looking at how to produce better data for people who are certified but not approved by FCA.

Mr Davidson said the FCA has a consultation out on the design of the directory to help consumers find a certified financial adviser and is looking for responses up until the start of October.

At the end of last year, MPs were told around 13,000 steelworkers who requested a pension transfer value from the British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS) have struggled to find a qualified adviser to help them using the Financial Conduct Authority register.

Stefan Zaitschenko, a former Tata Steel worker who helps run a Facebook group for members of the old scheme with 5,100 participants, told the Work and Pensions select committee that the high volume of pension transfer requests was a burden for local financial advisers, making choices harder for the steelworkers.

Rich Caddy, shift operations manager at British Steel in Teesside, told the committee that after finding a financial adviser that he was comfortable with he was forced to look for another one, since he was informed that the firm was at capacity.

Mr Caddy also said that it is difficult to find a professional suited to pension transfers.

He said: "The advice we have been given is to look in the [Financial Conduct Authority] FCA register, but only after looking at the drop-down menu [of a firm's register page] I found that they were not able to give pension transfer advice.

"This process could be made so much easier if I was able to find a pension transfer specialist just by putting in a post code."

emma.hughes@ft.com