The FCA has stripped three firms of their regulatory permissions due to unpaid levies and fees.

The regulator published final notices for the trio of investment advice and trading companies - Logic Financial Solutions in Nottingham, Mueller Precious Metal Trading and KJ Precious Metal Trading - on its website today.

Officials said the businesses had failed to pay up despite warnings. The latter two are registered as being based in the same London address.

In each case the FCA said it was “not satisfied” that they were “fit and proper”.

Logic Financial was owed £6,316.30 for regulatory fees and levies for the period 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017, which was due by 11 September 2016.

The other two companies both owed £655.05, which was due by mid-July last year.

The final notices stated each firm had failed to be “open and co- operative in all its dealings with the authority” in they had “ failed to respond to the authority’s repeated requests for it to pay the overdue balance, and has thereby failed to comply with Principle 11 of the Principles and to satisfy the authority that it is ready, willing and organised to comply with the requirements and standards under the regulatory system”.

The failures were ‘significant’, the FCA said, leading it to conclude the firms had each “failed to manage its business in such a way as to ensure that its affairs are conducted in a sound and prudent manner, that it is not a fit and proper person, and that it is therefore failing to satisfy the threshold conditions in relation to the regulated activities for which it has had a permission”.