Information on whistleblowing reports

Reference Case Number: FOI10051

Freedom of Information: Right to know request:

In relation to FOI9195, please provide an update for parts 1-4 for the 2022 calendar year, as well as January and February 2023. This includes:

1.   How many whistleblowing reports/notifications did the FCA receive? [please provide a monthly breakdown for this one]
2.   How many of these reports/notifications led to investigations?
3.   How many of these reports/notifications resulted in no further action?
4.   Please breakdown the nature of the notifications (FCA internal categories - such as conduct and culture/systems & controls

FCA response:

Question 1

Please see the table below, which sets out the number of whistleblowing cases received each month over the 2022 calendar year and in January and February 2023.

	2022	2023
Jan	89	89
Feb	77	95
Mar	106
Apr	72
May	91
Jun	79
Jul	103
Aug	103
Sept	84
Oct	101
Nov	110
Dec	65

Question 2

Of the cases received in 2022 and January and February 2023:

7 were closed having led to significant action to mitigate harm. Significant action may include, but is not limited to, enforcement investigation, s166 skilled persons reports or the variation/withdrawal of permissions; and
96 led to action, meaning that the whistleblower’s intelligence enabled Supervision to approach the firm and may or may not have led to the firm taking action.

Question 3

Of the cases received in 2022 and January and February 2023:

194 were assessed to have been relevant to the prevention of actual or potential harm, but did not lead to any specific action, ie. supervisory action did not involve contact being made with the firm; and
58 cases were not considered relevant to the prevention of harm.

Please note that 901 cases from the period remain under review, meaning that they are still being assessed and/or related actions remain ongoing. A further 8 were opened but were not pursued as cases (eg. because they were duplicates).

Question 4

Please see below the number/type of allegations recorded against whistleblowing cases during the relevant period. Please note that a whistleblowing case can contain more than one allegation, hence the higher number of allegations than cases.

Allegation Subject	2022	2023 (Jan- Feb only)
AML	20	5
Bribery & Corruption	24	1
Business Continuity Planning	5	3
Capital Adequacy	26	7
Client Assets	28	3
Competition	5	0
Compliance	368	71
Consumer Credit	14
Consumer Detriment	111	28
Consumer Duty ( newly introduced in 2022)	104	38
Covid 19	12	1
Crime	36	7
Culture of organisation	314	72
Data Security	60	10
Environmental Social Governance (ESG, newly introduced 2022)	16	3
Fitness & Propriety	416	54
Fraud	107	16
FSMA	81	6
FX-related	2	0
Insider Dealing	13	5
KYC	3	3
Market Activity	22	6
Market Manipulation	18	2
Mis-selling	43	6
Money Laundering concerns	52	5
Non-regulated products	1	0
Pension	4	1
Pressure Selling	33	6
Remuneration and incentivisation	6	5
Senior Manager Regime	8	3
Sexual Harassment	12	2
SYSC 18	36	8
Systems & Controls	180	49
Terrorist Finance	4	0
Treating Customers Fairly	310	42
Unauthorised Business	109	12

Please note that as a Prescribed Person under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, the FCA has been required since 2017 to report annually on the whistleblowing disclosures it receives every year and on the action that has been taken to address them. The FCA has so far published this information in its Annual Report and Accounts (which covers the period April-March of any given year). Reports for the last five years can be found here:

Since November 2021, we have provided additional data in relation to our whistleblowing function on the relevant pages of the FCA website[6]. This includes quarterly data on reports received – please see the following:

Date of Release: 29/03/2023

Information on whistleblowing reports - March 2023