Landmark legislation and tougher banking rules have not dispelled concerns over whistleblower treatment
The Financial Conduct Authority has shelved a programme to find out what whistleblowers think of its handling of their cases, despite publicly pledging three years ago to seek their feedback when every case closed, as The Banker exclusively reported this week.
The programme was discontinued in 2024 after the regulator concluded too few people responded to produce meaningful findings. The FCA has not provided participation figures or indicated if it would find alternative ways to get feedback at scale.
The decision has raised questions about the FCA’s ability to assess its treatment of whistleblowers amid growing scrutiny following the death by suicide of former banker Simon Andriesz on September 23, after years of raising allegations of wrongdoing at his former employer, BGC Group.
Documents obtained by the Transparency Task Force under Freedom of Information laws reveal that senior FCA officials had previously considered the importance of gathering feedback from whistleblowers at different stages of their cases.
Internal correspondence from December 2021 shows that Mark Steward, then executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the watchdog, wanted the original survey to include whistleblowers at earlier stages of their cases, amid concerns that focusing on those unhappy with their outcomes could skew the findings.
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