The FCA continues to keep busy with yet another survey being announced. We have received the following notification from the FCA.

“We wanted to advise you that we will shortly be sending a survey to all firms holding the credit broking permission. The survey will give us an updated view of whether and how firms are using the credit broking permission and will help us in our work to mitigate risks of harm to consumers. 

Questions will be relevant to the firm’s business model and include, for example, the type of credit broking activity carried out, including  how the firm is remunerated and how many creditors the firm has a relationship with.

We have designed the survey so that it is quick and simple to complete. We do not expect firms to carry out any additional work to prepare their answers. It should be possible to complete within no more than 30 minutes, but it may be less for some firms. Firms will have 15 working days to submit their responses. 

Whilst we are not seeking this information under our formal information gathering powers, we expect firms to complete it. We will remind firms of their obligations under Principle 11 to deal with their regulators in an open and cooperative way. If they do not complete the survey, we may contact them to understand the reasons for this. This may include whether they are still using the permission as per our previous communications to firms on regulatory permissions.

We are planning to send the survey initially to 300 firms as a pilot exercise on 20 May 2021. 

Following the pilot exercise, we anticipate sending the survey to the remainder of firms holding the credit broking permission in batches over two weeks from 5 July 2021. 

We will send a warm-up/introduction email to firms in the week before they receive the survey. Firms will then be emailed a link to complete the survey online. The link we send to firms will be unique to each firm. If firms need a different individual within their organisation (or a consultant) to answer and submit the survey, the link can be forwarded to the required person. 

We know firms will be concerned about phishing emails and scams. Firms should check the email is from either FCA@fcanewsletters.org.uk or FCACreditBrokingSurvey@fca.org.uk. We will remind firms of this both on our website and the introductory emails to them. 

If firms have any questions when completing the survey, they will be able to refer to the FAQs on our website in the first instance, or alternatively can contact our Supervision Hub on 0300 500 0597 from the UK or +44 207 066 100 from abroad, or via email at firm.queries@fca.org.uk.”