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Banks are launching an emergency hotline as the industry tries to tackle soaring levels of fraud. Customers who believe that they are being targeted by fraudsters pretending to be from an official body will be able to call 159 to receive help. They will be put through to their bank and given advice about whether they are being targeted by scammers. The hotline, which is being organised and funded by Stop Scams UK, a new industry body supported by the Financial Conduct Authority and Ofcom, will initially be in operation for a 12-month trial period. UK Finance has described the rise in fraud as a “national security threat,” having found that the number of scams hit record levels during the pandemic. Banks have come under pressure over reimbursement rates for customers. Of the record £355.3m lost to push-payment fraud last year, 42.4% was refunded in the first half of this year by the nine banks signed up to the industry’s refund code. Meanwhile, Nationwide Building Society has launched a new “scam checker service” to help protect its members from being tricked by criminals into making bank transfers. The service offers members an extra layer of protection against authorised push payment scams, which have exploded during the coronavirus pandemic as fraudsters have bombarded people with bogus messages and adverts.

 

The Times

Daily Mail

The Independent

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has fined Grant Thornton £4m for failures in its audits of collapsed cake chain Patisserie Valerie. The fine was for audits carried out between 2015 and 2017, the regulator said. The FRC said that the accountancy firm had "missed red flags" and failed to "question information provided by management." In October 2018, Patisserie Holdings announced that its board had been notified of potentially fraudulent accounting irregularities. The company subsequently entered into administration, leading to the closure of 70 stores and more than 900 job losses. The collapse followed the discovery of a huge black hole in the firm's accounts, eventually valued at £94m. After it went into administration, the cafe chain was found to have overstated its cash position by £30m and failed to disclose overdrafts of nearly £10m.

 

Financial Times

Evening Standard

Zhao Leji, China’s top anti-corruption official, will launch a nationwide audit of major financial firms and regulators to eliminate risk in the sector. The move comes on the back of debt crises at state-owned financial conglomerate Huarong and private property developer China Evergrande. The secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced there will be “full-scale disciplinary inspections” to safeguard the healthy development of China’s financial sector. Twenty-five organisations will be assessed, including the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission and China Securities Regulatory Commission.

 

South China Morning Post

NatWest is under scrutiny from campaigners due to it financing fossil fuel projects while sponsoring the Cop26 climate summit. NatWest is the banking sponsor of the Glasgow conference — where countries will pledge to reduce carbon emissions as part of a wide-ranging global effort — but was still providing underwriting and loans to energy companies expanding in the Arctic as recently as last year. According to a Reclaim Finance report detailing the funding of fossil fuel expansion in the Arctic, it backed projects to the tune of $539m.

 

City A.M.

The Financial Conduct Authority has told FT Adviser that there is currently no specific requirement to include questions on ESG investing in the advice process. However, the matter is growing increasingly pertinent for investors, with research from Aegon showing that 41% of advisers have seen more requests for ESG investments from clients. Guy Rainbird, public affairs director at the Association of Investment Companies, says ESG and climate change are “featuring strongly” in investors’ minds, with many advisers “proactively raising the issue of ESG or ethical preferences with clients.”

 

FT Adviser

Online fashion retailer Boohoo has published a list of the 1,100 factories it uses around the world as part of its pledge to be more transparent. This comes after the firm’s supply chain came into focus when it was revealed that some factory workers in Leicester were earning below the minimum wage. Transparency over the factories Boohoo uses was one of the recommendations made by an independent review produced by Alison Levitt QC. The review delivered 17 recommendations, with these broken down into 34 deliverables. Boohoo says 28 have been completed and the remainder are expected to be signed off “in the coming months.” Boohoo has also announced it intends to sign the legally binding International Accord for Health and Safety.

 

The Independent

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey says he can see a growing case for raising interest rates, noting that other members of the Monetary Policy Committee share this sentiment. In a speech to the Society of Professional Economists, he said: “All of us believe that there will need to be some modest tightening of policy to be consistent with meeting the inflation target sustainably over the medium term,” adding “Recent evidence appears to have strengthened that case, but there remain substantial uncertainties and we are monitoring the situation closely." The Bank last week increased its forecast for inflation at the end of 2021 to over 4%, far exceeding its 2% target rate. Although it expects the jump to be temporary, the Bank said the case for higher interest rates seems to have strengthened. Mr Bailey believes distinguishing between one-off increases in price levels and factors that could drive up the rate in the longer-term may present the Bank with a challenge, saying: “Monetary policy should not respond to supply shocks which do not become generalised through their impact on inflation expectations.”

 

Reuters

Bank of Ireland says state-imposed curbs on bankers' pay and bonuses are behind chief financial officer Myles O'Grady’s decision to leave the bank next March for a role outside the financial sector. Ireland capped executive pay at €500,000 a year and banned all forms of variable pay and fringe benefits for bank staff amid the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis. Bank of Ireland CEO Francesca McDonagh said the move has left Ireland's largest bank by assets at a competitive disadvantage to other companies and fellow members of the stock exchange which are not restricted in the same way.

 

Financial Times

Reuters

Law firm Leigh Day has begun court proceedings against Link Fund Solutions over its handling of the now-defunct Woodford Equity Income Fund. Leigh Day has issued a claim form on behalf of an initial group of 100 of the fund’s investors, in an attempt to recover their losses from the collapse of the fund in 2019.

 

FT Adviser

Amazon is to start offering insurance to small and medium-sized UK business customers, according to broker Superscript. Members of Amazon's Business Prime programme will be able to buy cover from Superscript such as contents insurance, cyber insurance and personal indemnity insurance, which a Superscript spokesperson said would be underwritten by "major UK insurers."

 

Reuters

Daily Mail

A study by neuroscientists at University College London (UCL) suggests that travelling to the office compartmentalises work and home life and can have a positive impact on mental health. Almost half of the 3,000 people surveyed said being in an office put them in a better mindset for work. “The commute delineates boundaries between home and work life and can be used to switch one off and transition to the other, which can have a positive impact on cognitive performance, wellbeing and productivity,” Joseph Devlin, professor of brain sciences at UCL, said. “Just going to work generates more diverse experiences than working from home, especially through interactions with other people.” Household chores, taking deliveries and longer lunch breaks were the biggest distractions for those working from home, according to respondents.

 

The Times

Daily Mail

The Financial Conduct Authority has banned adviser Anthony George, sole director of advice firm 4Life Financial Planning, from carrying out regulated activities after he understated his income by almost six times to HMRC. Mr George failed to declare his personal income in his self-assessment tax returns over five consecutive tax years and then concealed this by providing the FCA with information “which he knew to be false.” It was found that he did not inform the accountancy firms which prepared and submitted his tax returns that he was receiving additional income, with the adviser running two cash-in-hand businesses and receiving rental income.

 

FT Adviser