The FCA has added Finsbury Markets to its Warning List, confirming the firm is not authorized to provide or promote financial services in the UK. Compliance teams should treat this as a consumer protection and financial crime alert, ensuring no business relationships, referrals, or payment flows connect to this entity.
ASIC's latest Financial Advice Update covers professional year guidance, reference checking compliance gaps, inadequate professional indemnity insurance among licensees, poor-quality superannuation advice, and the qualifications standard, alongside a lengthy list of enforcement actions involving the Shield and First Guardian Master Funds. Compliance teams at AFS licensees must urgently review PI insurance adequacy, reference checking processes, and adviser registration and qualification status, as ASIC has demonstrated active surveillance and a willingness to take licence cancellation and banning action against non-compliant firms and individuals.
This ASIC Gazette issue (No. A36/26, dated 8 September 2026) is a routine administrative publication listing company reinstatements, deregistrations, changes of company type, and standard instruments issued under the Corporations Act 2001. It contains no new policy guidance or regulatory obligations of substantive compliance significance beyond the standard notification of rights of review process, but compliance teams should still review listings for any entities relevant to their client or counterparty due diligence.
ASIC has banned Garry Crole, former director and responsible manager of Interprac Financial Planning and former Sequoia Financial Group CEO, from financial services director and responsible manager roles for 10 years. The ban stems from his failure to respond to known concerns about authorized representatives' advice models and inadequate oversight of the approved product list, which included the now-collapsed First Guardian and Shield Master Funds. This action underscores ASIC's continued focus on individual accountability for licensee oversight failures connected to superannuation advice misconduct.
The FCA has issued a clone firm warning regarding "nevexglobal," an unauthorized entity falsely claiming to represent the genuine, FCA-recognized Global New Discovery Fund. Compliance teams at financial institutions should note this alert to update fraud-prevention monitoring, client-facing warnings, and due diligence checks against fraudulent entities exploiting legitimate firm credentials.
The FCA's latest quarterly Mortgage Charter data shows a drop in early rate lock-ins (381,364 in Q2 2026 versus 499,271 in Q1 2026), alongside a modest rise in temporary payment relief measures. Compliance teams at the 47 signatory lenders should review their data collection and reporting processes given the FCA's acknowledgment of data quality limitations and inconsistent methodologies across firms.
The FCA has released its September 2026 edition of the Mortgage Lending and Administration Return (MLAR) statistics, covering Q2 2026 data alongside full historical archives dating back to 2007. While this is a routine statistical publication rather than a new policy requirement, it provides compliance and risk teams with benchmarking data essential for market analysis, prudential reporting validation, and regulatory trend monitoring.
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