Welcome to the UKGI weekly regulation update service for Aviva ABC brokers

Context

The FCA has published the details of a review carried out by its Senior Independent Director, Richard Lloyd.  In August 2024, a former employee who left the FCA some years ago made an allegation publicly that, in the course of whistleblowing, their identity was not kept confidential by the chair of the FCA, Ashley Alder.  Following the first public allegation, a second former employee of the FCA, who also left some years ago, came forward with a similar allegation as to the handling of their whistleblowing communication to the chair.

Key points to note and next actions

• In line with the corporate governance of the FCA, Mr Lloyd carried out an internal review of the handling of the individual’s whistleblowing communications by the Chair, considering the terms of the FCA’s internal whistleblowing policy in context.
• Mr Lloyd has concluded that the Chair, in forwarding the e-mails that he received directly from the two individuals concerned to relevant colleagues internally, reasonably took the view that he was providing information to them of which they were already aware, in order to request advice on the range of matters they contained and to ensure that these were correctly addressed and progressed.
• The Chair routinely consults senior managers on sensitive matters, including obtaining legal advice, within strict terms of confidentiality and indeed their roles require those managers to operate under such requirements generally.
• Mr Lloyd has discussed the FCA’s internal whistleblowing policy, a review of which was already ‘well underway’, with independent external legal advisers and the leading whistleblowing charity, Protect. Going forward, it will make clear and state expressly that, in the rare instances of whistleblowing requiring escalation to non-executives, such communications will be shared by them with appropriate internal or external expert advisers on a confidential ‘need to know’ basis.