Chief executive Martin Wheatley told attendees at an FCA conference on financial crime the moral benchmarks the regulator worked towards were almost completely different from those of ten years previously.
He said: “The FCA is also now far more willing to make judgement-based decisions. Ethical decisions. To examine questions of moral hazard as much as questions of mechanical impropriety. That is important I think.
“You can’t always react or respond to gross derelictions of moral duty with a tick list of technical submissions. The Old Testament doesn’t record Moses descending from Mount Sinai with an FSA rulebook.”
Personal conduct and accountability would be a significant focus for the regulator, he added.
FCA enforcement and financial crime director Tracey McDermott said an important way of keeping the financial services industry clean was keeping those without integrity out of the sector: “Many applications for authorisation from people wanting to buy or control or found financial firms fall by the wayside during the application process for exactly those reasons.
“This is often because of concerns about murky pasts turned up by our research and close intelligence-sharing relationships.”
Many applicants withdrew before they had been formally turned down because they sensed the way the wind was blowing, she said.
