29th October 2009
It is a funny old game, as "Greavesie" would say
Money Marketing reported this week that Land of Leather chief executive Paul Briant was fined £14,000 for failing to properly oversee PPI sales.
Senior staff at Alliance & Leicester, whose firm received a £7m PPI fine, were not hit with any personal penalties.
Adam Phillips, chairman of the Financial Services Consumer Panel is on record as saying that "I want to see more senior people, the heads of UK retail banking, sanctioned for miss-selling PPI. At the moment the most senior person [to have been sanctioned] is the chief executive of Land of Leather."
IFA Phil Castle stated that he completely agrees with what Mr. Phillips has said. "People (senior managers and directors) need to be held personally responsible to a greater extent, but that ALSO applies to the directors and managers at the FSA, FOS and FSCS as well as politicians if they are found to have pursued a course of action which is subsequently found to be illegal."
The likelihood of this happening is of course zero. We live in a society where the consumer has rights and no responsibilities, where a regulator has responsibilities but provides no affordable rights to appeal or redress when they get it wrong, supported by rules which prohibit those wronged taking legal action against the organisation or the individuals concerned.
Given the case this week of the Nimrod crash enquiry and the roles of the MOD and BAE, it is quite clear that much is wrong with the world we live in. Those that should take the rap for bad decisions continue to walk away unscathed into other higher or highly paid positions without a blot to their reputation leaving others crawling around, if they are lucky, in the wreckage that they have created.
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