Involving your MP

Hi tony

I have twice written to my MP concerning Collateral. The latest one was prepared by duck . The sheer number of complaints does seemed to have focused MP's minds.
Today I have written to my MP concerning P2P regulation in general and FS in particular. Obviously, I haven't had a response yet, but I'll PM you a copy. You may need to edit it for your own purposes.

We have been called many things but congratulations ilmoro for that, has to be one of the best.

tony as noted above I am currently running a campaign wrt Collateral, I know we have been in touch in the past, I have sent you the details of the latest 'push' via PM.

Here's the relevant extract from the FCA's oral evidence to the Treasury Committee on 12 May: 

Q146 Harriett Baldwin: I wanted to get an update, for the benefit of the Committee, in terms of the peer-to-peer lending situation and the investigation with Collateral. Can you just update the Committee on that?



Nikhil Rathi: As you know, there have been investigations under way.



Q147 Harriett Baldwin: Are they still under way? Have they come to a conclusion yet?



Nikhil Rathi: What I would say is that they are very close to coming to a conclusion. The enforcement investigation is at an advanced stage. I am not going to comment too much further because one element of it is a criminal investigation, but they are at an advanced stage.



Q148 Harriett Baldwin: Okay, I understand that, but I understand also that the investigation covers a situation where someone was actually able to get into your computer systems and physically alter the records on your computer systems—a very sophisticated hack. I wondered whether you, as chief executive, are comfortable that it would no longer be possible for anyone to do that.



Nikhil Rathi: In the context of the cyber-security risks that we are all dealing with, which are published by the National Cyber Security Centre, I don’t think any chief executive is going to say they are comfortable; they are quite sobering in terms of the heterogeneous range of actors who seek to undermine us. For instance, you saw what happened in the US with an oil pipeline this week.



However, where we have taken action is to deal with that specific issue around the register, where there was an ability to adjust the contact details around permission. That specific issue has been tightened up very considerably, but this broader issue of cyber-security—just as we tell the industry, this is an area where we will have to keep investing very heavily to try to stay ahead of a fast-moving adversary environment.



Q149 Harriett Baldwin: At the moment, as I understand it, you encourage consumers to check your website to see if someone has got a registration and whether that registration reflects the current state of your evaluation of their business. So can you say to consumers at the moment that, as your website stands today, you feel comfortable that it fairly reflects all the current participants in the market—that what is on your website is accurate?



Nikhil Rathi: I am broadly comfortable that the website does that. Of course, I can’t say it’s perfect. There are 930,000 entries and they are dynamic; they are changing every day. We are investing very heavily in the register to continually improve the data integrity around it, and also to seek to, as we started to do last year, explain very clearly the warnings around different types of entry on the register. Just because a firm is on the register, it doesn’t mean you get a full level of protection. We are dealing with everything from firms that that are registered for money laundering right through to the largest banking and investment groups in the country. So we try to make it more comprehensive in terms of how people understand the information on there.



Q150 Harriett Baldwin: It is so important—isn’t it?—because you were just talking about the online harms. If you are a consumer and you are trying to do your best to protect yourself, you kind of rely on the FCA website to be an accurate reflection of the products and the product providers that you are interacting with.



Nikhil Rathi: I agree. And that’s why one of the early decisions I took on becoming chief executive was to invest more resources in technology, and one significant set of projects that we are working on is products around data integrity.



Q151 Harriett Baldwin: Going back to the situation with Collateral specifically, I understand that it was discovered in November 2019—was it?—that the information on your website had been changed by the person you are investigating, and then it took you until February of the following year to reflect that, in terms of the information that investors could see, and that between those two dates an additional £3.8 million was invested in Collateral. Do you think that the FCA should use a redress scheme to help those people who were affected by that particular regulatory failure?



Nikhil Rathi: The enforcement investigation is under way. There are also, as you will be aware, a number of complaints relating to Collateral. So we will address all those complaints in the normal way, as the investigation reaches its conclusion.



Q152 Harriett Baldwin: Can you give the Committee an idea of how soon we might see that conclusion?



Nikhil Rathi: I am certainly hoping that, on the investigation, we will be able to give you a very substantive update in the next few months.



Q153 Harriett Baldwin: So by the end of July?



Nikhil Rathi: I would hope that by September we would be able to give you something, and we will seek to try and do it sooner. Without going into any specifics on this case, you will be aware that with the general enforcement protocol, where the FCA is seeking to potentially take action against anybody, there is a very specific process that allows firms or individuals to make representations and put their case before anything is made public. So we have to bear that in mind when we are making any enforcement decision. That is why it is always difficult to give you a hard timetable, because there is that statutory process we have to go through at the very end of an investigation.



Q154 Harriett Baldwin: So by 1 September?



Nikhil Rathi: I certainly hope so. We often have these conversations in the Committee. There are rules set out in FSMA around how people are able to make their case, and they often have very well-resourced lawyers who will use every point of process to delay things. I am not saying that is happening in this case; I am making a general point. I have seen, having been six months in the FCA, just how these things can get drawn out, particularly in a contested case.



Q155 Harriett Baldwin: Are there any words of wisdom you would like to share with consumers out there about peer-to-peer lending and investing in peer-to-peer vehicles?



Nikhil Rathi: We have said you need to approach with care and you should only invest money you can afford to lose, and we have put restrictions around the percentage of your net assets that can be invested in a portfolio of peer-to-peer opportunities. These are not bank deposits where the advertised interest rate is guaranteed. These are risky investments that, if you are going to invest in them, it should be as part of a much wider portfolio.



Harriett Baldwin: Thank you. 

I agree but I'm not sure i'd hold out much hope this will be the case sometime soon.

That said in the banking sector i've had some good results in my favour from the FCA so one can only hope they will eventually figure it out!.

Sadly there will still be lot of people who think the P2P sector is just banking by a different name. I guess the latest forms one has to agree to before investing in P2P will hope to make it more obvious but there will always be some people who don't read these things just sign the forms that gets them through the gatekeeper to the potential booty!.