SCAMS and potential stings are among the main reasons people contact the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) Consumer Contact Centre, according to new data released by the regulator.
The centre is the main point of contact for financial services consumers and the FCA handled nearly 107,000 calls between December 1, 2015 and November 30, 2016, a decrease of 10 per cent on the previous year.
More than a third of them (36 per cent) were from people checking on the status of firms to see if they were regulated by the FCA; a further 15 per cent related to how people were treated by firms in areas such as claims handling and arrears or repossession queries; and 13 per cent were reports or inquiries about potential or actual scams.
The regulator also revealed the most common stings – a list topped by advance fee fraud, which saw a 42 per cent rise in contact centre calls.
In a case study, the FCA told how Natasha contacted them after being offered a £1000 loan, to check if the firm that made the offer was genuine.
“The firm had called Natasha after she applied for a loan of £1000 online,” they said.
“She had already given them her bank details, but they then asked her to pay an upfront fee, equal to the first month’s payment, or to provide a guarantor.
“A regulated firm of the same name was listed in the Financial Services Register. We gave her this firm’s details from the register and suggested she contact them to see if they had a record of her.
“Natasha called us back a few days later to let us know that it wasn’t the regulated firm who had contacted her.
“While we were speaking with her, the fraudster called her back and she told them that she had reported them to the FCA. The scammer told her she was blacklisted from applying for loans.”
The regulator then advised Natasha to speak to her bank and Action Fraud, before adding a warning on their website making others aware of the cloned firm.
Boiler room scams were the second most common accounting for 28 per cent of the total.
These are stings run from so-called “boiler rooms” where fraudsters cold-call investors offering them what later turn out to be worthless, overpriced or non-existent shares.
“While they promise high returns, those who invest usually end up losing their money” said the FCA. “The fraudsters use high-pressure sales tactics and often target older consumers.”
A third fraud which has seen a rise of a third year-on-year is the “FCA scam”, where people and firms are contacted through email, letters or by phone, by fraudsters trying to extract money or personal details by the caller claiming to be from the regulator.
Another case study tells how Robin was called by someone claiming to be from the FCA, and was told he had been awarded £3750 compensation for mis-sold PPI. But in order for the regulator to release the cash, Robin was asked to pay 10 per cent of its value to the FCA in the form of an iTunes gift card.
Robin then contacted the real FCA, who passed the case on to their financial crime team.
The FCA said: “More than one in 10 consumers who approach us, do so to report a financial scam and to ask what their next steps are.
“Because of this, and the contact centre’s escalation of such queries, more than 150 consumer alerts about unauthorised firms were published on our website.”
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