The FCA has handed £150 compensation to an unnamed adviser who said his firm was wrongly listed on the Financial Services Register as an appointed representative for an unnamed firm he had already left and never worked with.

The adviser alleged the fact they were listed as an AR to the firm was adversely impacting their business and reputation.

The adviser requested that the FCA update the Register to remove the incorrect reference and to reflect their current status as an approved AR of a different firm.

The FCA told them it wouldn’t change the listing. It said: “The FS Register currently shows factually accurate information, which is that your firm were an AR of [Firm X] from 11 September 2024 to 26 September 2024. Therefore, [the FCA] are unable to remove this information from the FS Register.”

The adviser then complained to the Complaints Commissioner about the listing. The Commissioner did not uphold the complaint saying: “The FCA followed the correct process and updated the FS Register based on Firm X’s notification.”

But the adviser also claimed that they terminated their contract with Firm X before the application had been determined by the FCA, and the firm told the adviser it would ‘pause’ the application, but seemingly did not. The adviser said that they never conducted any activity as an AR of the firm.

The Complaints Commissioner said: “The FCA's position is that once a case is determined the principal firm cannot withdraw the submission. As a result, the FCA says it has no choice but to reflect this on the FS Register.”

The Commissioner disagreed, saying: “I disagree that the FS Register accurately reflects the situation. The principal-AR relationship is established by contract, not merely by the principal’s notification to the FCA. In this case, the contract was terminated in July 2024 - before the principal submitted the notification, and before the FCA approved it in September 2024. The AR never conducted activities for the principal. Therefore, the FS Register is factually inaccurate.”

The Commissioner added: “In my view a situation has arisen whereby a firm is being unfairly penalised for the wrongful actions of its principal, and the FS Register is factually incorrect.”

The FCA responded by merging the FRNs so that both current and historical relationships for [the adviser’s firm] are on one FRN. The FCA added: “We consider that there should have been only one record for [your firm] on the Register in the first place. We made an error when processing the second AR notification. As a result, we will apologise to [the complainant] and offer £150 for the inconvenience this has caused.”