A couple of complaints against the FSA act as a useful reminder that the onus for submission to, and receipt by, the FSA of returns, notifications etc. lies with the firm concerned.
In the first complaint, when submitting a return by GABRIEL, a firm appears to have accidentally omitted some data items. In their defence they cited an issue with GABRIEL that allows users to ‘move on’ without completing all the data items. The £250 penalty (‘administration fee’) imposed by the FSA was upheld. For those not already adopting such a practice, firms may wish to consider introducing a ‘four eyes’ approach when submitting items on GABRIEL (and on ONA, come to that).
The second complaint involved a firm submitting documentation by post, in this case concerning a request to cancel its Part IV permission, which was apparently not received by the FSA. The penalty for the firm in this instance was that because the cancellation request (which the firm submitted on 26 March 2010) was not received by the FSA by its year end (31 March) the firm was liable to pay FSA fees for 2010/11 even though the firm in question ceased conducting regulated activities on 31 January 2010. The lesson here is that where important documents are concerned, firms should consider using some form of ‘signed-for’ receipt e.g. registered post or courier or even by way of hand delivery by a representative of the firm itself.
