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'End to End' Enforcement Review

Report Published

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The FSA's processing of enforcement cases will be more efficient and timely in future as internal processes are tightened up, in line with the recommendations of an in-depth review. A summary of the review's key findings is published today.

The ‘end to end’ review of the FSA’s enforcement process was announced by the FSA's Chief Executive John Tiner in September 2003. Acknowledging that the FSA could and should act more quickly in the face of misconduct, the objective of the review was to identify ways in which the enforcement process could be both improved and speeded-up.

The review was conducted in three parts, with separate teams looking at each of the case referral, investigation and decision making stages. The teams consulted external stakeholders and sought examples of good practice amongst professional service firms and other regulators both in the UK and abroad. Many of the recommendations made in the review are now being implemented and, as a consequence, the enforcement process is already beginning to operate more efficiently.

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Recommendations contained in the report include:

• shorter time targets for each stage of the referral and investigation processes;
• a faster process for referring cases to enforcement for investigation;
• improvements to the speed and efficiency of our investigations whilst retaining their quality and fairness - we hope to make average savings of about 30% in the time taken to complete investigations;
• investment in IT to assist in the management of cases and the handling of information gathered in investigations;
• speeding-up the decision making process without undermining its fairness or the quality of the decisions made.

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Andrew Procter, the FSA's Director of Enforcement, said today:

"The FSA is a responsive regulator, which listens to feedback from the industry and consumers. We are constantly reviewing our processes to make regulation efficient and timely and the end to end review is just one aspect of this on-going process. We have been operating within our governing legislation for 2 ½ years now, and we are learning from our own experience.

"We are confident that the process will remain fair and will deliver the right results in the right cases.

"More complex cases and those in which the allegations are particularly serious will continue to take time, as is appropriate."