FSA Ordered To Release Confidential Documents Relating To L&G Judgement

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

23 February 2005

The UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA) has been ordered by the Financial Services and Markets Tribunal to release information given by the regulator to its Regulatory Decisions Committee in its dispute with Legal & General over endowment mortgage mis-selling.

Ruling in January, the Tribunal substantially watered-down charges brought by the Financial Services Authority against the insurance firm.

L&G was fined £1.1 million by the FSA in 2003 over the mis-selling of risky endowment mortgages to customers seeking low risk arrangements between 1997 and 1999. Although the Tribunal supported that allegation, it disputed that such mis-selling was as widespread as the financial services regulator had claimed.

The panel also provisionally stated that the penalty amount suggested by the FSA should be reduced.

Explaining the reasoning behind the disclosure order, which the financial services regulator has argued is "tantamount to a request to be allowed to trawl generally through the FSA's files", Judge David Mackie announced on Monday that:

"We will make an order to enable us to see all the RDC had in front of it when it came to its decision."

However, according to a Times Online report, Judge Mackie excluded from the order documents protected by legal privilege, and the minutes of meetings in which the RDC deliberated on the matter.

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