The Manchester-based business fraudulently claimed to have been authorised and regulated by the FCA. It did this by manipulating the FCA’s register, a public record of regulated companies. Peter Currie, one Collateral’s directors, changed the name of Regal Pawn, a business that did have an FCA “interim permission”, to Collateral in December 2015. This allowed Collateral to encourage consumers to invest based on a bogus FCA authorisation.
The regulator did not spot this until November 2017 and did not correct the register until more than two months later in January 2018.
Not that I’d want to recommend illegality but that is clever, got to admit.
Presumably the FCA operates on the basis of trust. If you send them a letter on headed paper saying that Regal Pawn is now called Collateral, then they’ll update their records without checking.
Government efficiency in action again.
Are lessons going to be learned? Was it a systemic failure where no individual could be found to be at fault?
How very “Day of the Jackal”.