The APPG’s primary objective in producing this report is to provide ideas and stimulate debate about how the FCA’s shortcomings might be addressed and its performance improved.
To this end, the APPG tasked its Secretariat with assembling a Recommendations Panel composed of independent experts with a wide range of relevant perspectives.
Only prospective Panellists who agreed to become members of the APPG secretariat and to handle the evidence gathered as instructed were appointed. This meant that a high standard of data governance could be maintained and that respondents’ expectations of confidentiality met.
The following Recommendations Panel members were recruited:
Roger Mullin
Roger is a former member of Parliament for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. During his period as an MP, Roger was a treasury spokesperson and led a range of Parliamentary campaigns for greater transparency and ethics in the financial system. He succeeded in moving the UK government to hold an inquiry and make some all too modest changes to Scottish Limited Partnerships which continue to be a vehicle for international criminality and money laundering. His Parliamentary campaigning on SLPs is discussed in Oliver Bullough’s book 'Butler To The World'. He continues the fight. Roger has written on the need to tackle the culture of financial institutions including banks, addressing in particular failings in ethics. He has written on such matters for the likes of International Banker, The Herald and The National. Roger is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Stirling, where he has lectured on ethical finance as part of the university’s MSc in Strategic Sustainable Business. He has also taught Applied Decision Theory and related ethical questions on a range of post graduate programmes. He is a former chair of the university’s joint departmental research ethics committee in which capacity he undertook ethical reviews of research proposals.
Louise Baxter-Scott MBE
Louise graduated with a law degree in 2001. In 2002 she started work for Trading Standards. By 2009 Louise was a Senior Manager and took over as Chair of the Chartered Trading Standards Institutes (CTSI) Consumer Empowerment Alliance. Louise is the CTSI’s Lead Officer for advice and education and is currently the Immediate Past Chair of CTSI and Non-Executive Director on the CTSI Board. She currently sits as a panel member on the Phone-Paid Services Authority Consumer Panel and the Government Joint Fraud Taskforce. In 2011 Louise got frustrated by the system in relation to support of scam victims and started what is now the National Trading Standards Scams Team. Since this time Louise has led the National Trading Standards Scams Team. In 2015 Louise was given a Heroes Award in recognition of the significant contribution she has made to consumer protection. In 2017 Louise was awarded a fellowship and an MBE for Protecting Vulnerable Consumers from Financial Abuse. Louise has a particular focus on protecting consumers and changing the perception of consumer vulnerability.
Nicholas Morris
Dr Nicholas Morris is an Adjunct Professor at La Trobe Law School, Melbourne; and a Visiting Professor at the China Executive Leadership Academy, Pudong, China and the Hindu University of Indonesia. Previous academic posts include Adjunct Professor at UNSW Law and Justice, Sydney; Visiting Fellow at Balliol College and The Martin School, Oxford; Fellow at University of Melbourne; and Visiting Professor at City University Business School, London. Nicholas has over 40 years of experience advising companies, governments and international agencies, in the UK, Australia, Europe, China, SE Asia and the Middle East, on financial regulation, health and social support systems, and the financing of essential infrastructure. In recent years he has focused on regulatory and other reforms needed for sustainable development, in both developed and developing countries. Nicholas also led a team at Oxford to examine how the trustworthiness of the financial system could be improved, after the Global Financial Crisis, which led to the book 'Capital Failure: Rebuilding Trust in Financial Services' (Oxford University Press, 2014, 2016). More recently he has published 'Management and Regulation of Pension Schemes: Australia: A Cautionary Tale' (Routledge, 2018).
Dr. Kara Tan Bhala
Dr. Kara Tan Bhala is an award winning author and the President and Founder of Seven Pillars Institute for Global Finance and Ethics, USA, the world’s only independent think tank for research, education, and promotion of financial ethics. From 2015-2021 Dr. Tan Bhala was an Honorary Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London. For 18 years she ran her own international financial markets consulting firm. Dr. Tan Bhala has a rare combination of professional training and extensive experience in both global finance and moral philosophy. She has nearly thirty years of experience in global finance, much of which was gained through working on Wall Street. She has been a sell-side equity analyst, a sell-side equity sales person, a buy-side equity analyst, and a portfolio manager. She was a lecturer at the University of Kansas School of Business, USA, where she taught Global Finance and Ethics. Dr. Tan Bhala has five degrees across three disciplines: a Bachelor's (City University of London, UK) and Masters (Oxford University, UK) in Business, a Masters in Liberal Studies (New York University, USA), and a Masters and PhD in Philosophy (University of Kansas, USA). She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, USA, and the Royal Society of Asian Affairs, UK.
David Pitt-Watson
David Pitt-Watson is a leading thinker, campaigner and practitioner in the field of responsible investment. He was co-founder and former CEO of Hermes Focus Funds and Equity Ownership Service. These became the largest responsible investment group of any institutional fund manager in the world. The business he founded now has $1 trillion under advice. During his career he has been deeply involved in policy and has led numerous initiatives to improve the performance of the financial system. For example he chaired the UN Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative in the run up to the Paris Climate Conference. He has led the RSA’s Tomorrow’s Investor programme. This has included advocating for a more effective system for providing pensions which deliver a lifetime income—established in the 2020 Pensions Bill. He also led the advocacy for transparency of charging structures for pensions. He was Visiting Pembroke Professor, and now a Fellow at Cambridge University. His books have been translated into five languages. He was an independent non-executive at KPMG, Treasurer of Oxfam and chaired the NESTA endowment fund.
Professor David Llewellyn
David Llewellyn is Emeritus Professor of Money and Banking at Loughborough University. He has previously worked as an economist in Unilever (Rotterdam), HM Treasury (London) and the International Monetary Fund (Washington). Much of his research and publications has focussed on financial regulation and consumer protection and he was appointed a Public Interest Director of the Personal Investment Authority (the previous UK regulator of retail investment companies), and for five years was the Chair of the European Banking Authority’s Banking Stakeholder Group. He has served as a consultant to several financial regulatory authorities including the South African Reserve Bank. He has been a strong supporter of mutuality in the financial system. He has written several books and many articles on finance, the financial system and its regulation. His most recent book investigates financial exclusion.
Associate Professor Andy Schmulow
Associate Professor Andy Schmulow is an Australian legal academic specialising in financial system regulation, specifically Twin Peaks. His focus is on driving good conduct towards consumers and combatting regulatory capture. His advice has been sought by, among others, the Australian Banking Royal Commission, the Australian Law Reform Commission, the South African National Treasury, the Korean Insurance Association, the New Zealand Law Reform Commission, regulators, central banks and parliamentarians. His advice has been reflected in recommendations made by those bodies and in legislation such as the Financial Regulator Assessment Authority Bill in Australia and the Conduct of Financial Institutions Bill in South Africa. He was tasked by CGAP, a division of the World Bank, to lead in the creation of the world’s first consumer-outcomes indicator framework, to measure consumer financial well-being, first in South Africa, and ultimately for deployment in countries comprising some 1.5 billion consumers. He consults with the financial industry on embracing and embedding fair treatment of consumers, and his research has been published in some of the world’s leading peer-reviewed journals. He has held honorary positions at various universities around the world and is a member of a research cluster at the European Banking Institute. He is admitted to practice in South Africa and Australia.
Dr. Louise Ashley
Dr Louise Ashley is a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London and a Fellow of its Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. She specialises in researching diversity and inclusion in large multinational organisations and 'elite' occupations with a particular focus on social mobility and class. Dr Ashley has published articles in leading academic journals and her research has been widely covered in media, both in the UK and internationally. Her recently published book, Highly Discriminating: Why the City isn't Fair and Diversity Doesn't Work, explores why City firms generate class and gender inequalities, how they benefit, and what they can do in response.
Jack Gilbert
Jack Gilbert is a journalist at international financial publishers Citywire where he is currently editor of its publication for financial advisers in the UK, Citywire New Model Adviser. During his career he has won various industry awards, including Headlinemoney’s B2B journalist of the year in 2017 and 2020. Jack’s reporting has included investigations into various financial scandals, most notably he featured prominently in BBC Panorama’s 2022 hour-long documentary, The Billion-Pound Savings Scandal. He has also written for various other publications including Private Eye.
John Howard
John Howard joined the BBC as one of the leading voices on Radio 4. He presented documentaries, phone-ins and discussion programmes, winning several awards. He became best known as the consumer’s champion on the daily magazine programme ‘You and Yours’, which he presented for 14 years. In 1997 he was invited to join the Mortgage Code Compliance Board as an independent director. He subsequently became a member of the Financial Services Consumer Panel, which he chaired for 3 years until 2008. Between 2006 and 2008 he was a member of the Market Participants Group of CESR, the European committee of securities regulators, and he also joined the Treasury’s Retail Financial Services Group. On stepping down from the Consumer Panel, he joined the Board of the Financial Ombudsman Service and also became a Non-Executive Director of the energy Regulator, Ofgem. In 2010 he was appointed as an Independent Commissioner by the Treasury for the Equitable Life Payments Commission. He served on the With Profits Committee and the Independent Governance Committee of Scottish Widows. He was a Trustee of the Thalidomide Trust. He was Vice Chair and Senior Independent Director of the Family Building Society and a Non-Executive Director of the Banking Competition Remedies Company. He is Chief Executive of the company he founded, Consumer Insights, which provides advice on principles based regulation and fairness in the financial, energy and water sectors.
Rachel Neale
Rachel is the lead campaigner for UK Mortgage Prisoners. She first became involved with mortgage prisoners when she was asked to be filmed for the Panorama documentary 'Trapped by my mortgage'. From then she began to lead the campaign through the Facebook group. Her mortgage is held with Landmark. She has worked hard to bring change to those that are trapped after the 2008 financial crash and now work with different organisations to bring mortgage prisoners support for mental health and debt. She works on case studies against those unregulated firms and banks that treat their members unfairly. She is the chair on the committee at Harcus Parker for the group litigation. They have helped set up the APPG for Mortgage Prisoners in Parliament and work closely to bring legislation change. Rachel also sits as a stakeholder for UK Mortgage Prisoners on the solutions group as a spokesperson. She has spoken in Parliament at the mortgage prisoners debate held on 6th June 2020.