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Finance worker speaks up over fake charges to clients

Patrick worked as an adviser in the financial services industry. He was concerned that his employer had been breaching Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulations for a number of years. In particular, Patrick’s firm was charging clients for advice that it had not given and it assessed the performance of its employees by using targets that were logged on a league table. Patrick was also concerned that a senior director of the firm had told employees how they could extract higher fees from clients by misrepresenting financial information.

Patrick raised these concerns to his manager but he did not accept there was any wrongdoing. Patrick was later dismissed. He then decided to raise his concerns to the FCA. Patrick was worried that his employer might give him a negative reference so he called Protect for advice.

Protect explained that a negative reference could be an example of post-employment detriment for whistleblowing. As such, Patrick could bring an employment tribunal claim against his former employer if it gave a poor reference so long as he could link this to his whistleblowing. We also explained that Patrick may be able to make a claim for his dismissal and explained how the whistleblowing laws work and the arguments Patrick could make. We also advised that the FCA takes a firm stance on whistleblowing victimisation.

Patrick thanked us for our advice. He later informed us that he had been successful in securing new employment and was pleased that he had raised concerns to the FCA because public interest wrongdoing should be called out.