FCA cancels payday lender’s interim permission, bans director and refuses application to conduct regulated business 

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has banned Andrew Barry Hart, the sole director, controller and ultimate owner of Wage Payment and Payday Loans Limited (WPPL), from performing any role in regulated financial services. The FCA has also cancelled WPPL’s interim permission and refused its applications for WPPL to be authorised to carry out regulated activities and for Mr Hart to be an approved person.

This follows the Decision Notices published in July of this year which set out the FCA’s decisions to prohibit Mr Hart and cancel WPPL’s interim permission. As explained in the FCA’s July press release, those Decision Notices had been referred to the Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber). However, those references have since been withdrawn, and so the FCA has proceeded to prohibit Mr Hart and cancel WPPL’s interim permission.

The FCA has prohibited Mr Hart because he is not a fit and proper person, due to his lack of integrity and competence. WPPL’s interim permission has been cancelled because the firm has failed to satisfy the threshold conditions regarding appropriate resources and suitability.

This is the first prohibition of a senior manager for a lack of compliance with regulatory requirements in the consumer credit sector since the FCA took over regulation of consumer credit in April 2014. Mark Steward, FCA Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight, said:

“There is no place in an FCA-regulated consumer credit market for firms like WPPL or senior managers, like Mr Hart, who lack the requisite integrity and competence to ensure customers are treated fairly and all relevant regulatory obligations are met. We will continue to use our powers to protect consumers and tackle firms who cross the line and senior managers whose failures have caused or contributed to the firm’s failures.”

In light of the facts underlying the decisions to prohibit Mr Hart and cancel WPPL’s interim permission, together with further evidence of Mr Hart’s lack of fitness and propriety, the FCA has refused WPPL’s application for authorisation and its application for Mr Hart to be an approved person.

The further evidence relied upon by the FCA in rejecting those applications includes WPPL’s failure to co-operate properly with the Financial Ombudsman Service in relation to complaints made by customers about the firm. The FCA has also relied upon adverse findings made against Mr Hart in the High Court, including that he was not a credible witness and had provided evidence to the court which he knew to be false.

Source: FCA

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