'Splits' intermediaries – request for FSA and expert input to the ombudsman service
last updated November 2005
A firm of solicitors acting for fifteen private client stockbroking and investment management firms wanted the wider-implications process to be applied to certain complaints concerning split-capital investment trusts that were currently being considered by the ombudsman service. They said that the FSA should provide the ombudsman service with certain market information and that the ombudsman service should also seek input from experts nominated by the relevant industry liaison group (and the Financial Services Consumer Panel).
The FSA and the ombudsman service accepted that the issue of alleged mis-selling of ‘splits’ raised wider implications, but they did not consider that the wider-implications process should be applied in relation to the particular cases concerned.
So far as the market information concerned was in the public domain, the solicitors could provide it as evidence on behalf of their clients. So far as the market information was confidential information that had been gathered by the FSA as part of its supervisory and regulatory work, the FSA was constrained about disclosing it.
The ombudsman service had already received expert reports from the relevant trade body. The individual firms had already had an opportunity of submitting evidence, and were free to submit additional evidence. As the solicitors represented fifteen firms, they were in a position to provide further evidence based on a broad view from the industry perspective.