A non-profit organisation supporting UK whistleblowers has criticised the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) after the regulator’s chair was accused of breaching whistleblower confidentially rules.

According to a report by the Financial Times (FT), Ashley Alder passed on communication from a whistleblower in December and March which included the personal details of the complainant, including their name, address, and concerns.

Forwarding the correspondence of a whistleblower with unredacted details is in breach of the FCA's policy to not reveal the identity of the complainant without consent, a rule which the chair presides over.

Georgina Halford-Hall, chief executive of WhistleblowersUK, said that the chair should have faced “catastrophic” consequences given the role he holds within the organisation.

It is unclear whether Alder, who became chair of the board in February 2023, has faced any action by the regulator for the alleged confidentiality breach.

Halford-Hall said that this was another example of the regulator putting the reputation of organisation “over and above” their responsibility to the whistleblowers, adding that the case shows that the FCA “hasn’t got it’s own house in order”.

“More worrying is the message it sends to those it regulates, that policy and procedures are simply window dressing, and that there are no consequences for failing to comply,” the chief executive told FStech. “It could send the UK’s reputation plummeting again.”

The accusations come after the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) last year found that the FCA had broken GDPR rules, with The Times reporting that the organisation had breached data protection policy by intercepting and diverting emails in a bid to keep track of people “considered a nuisance”.

In 2018, the authority was also criticised by the Financial Regulators Complaints Commissioner for allegedly revealing the identity of a whistleblower at the Royal Bank of Scotland. According to The FT, at the time the FCA said that claims against it were “groundless”.

FStech has reached out to the FCA for comment.

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