Data Publications
This week we have published:
Consumer investments data review
We summarise our work to tackle consumer harm in the investment market between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022.
This is our fourth Consumer Investments Data Review. We have published these reviews regularly since 2020 to give greater transparency about how we protect consumers from investment harm.
As well as giving insights into our work, this data helps us monitor progress towards our Consumer Investments Strategy outcomes, particularly those on high-risk investments, scams and fraud.
The data shows we have maintained our focus on preventing and reducing serious harm to consumers in this market. For example we:
- stopped 1 in 5 new consumer investment firms who applied from entering the market
- opened 59% more supervisory cases on high-risk investments or investments scams
- published 1844 consumer alerts about unauthorised firms or individuals (a 40% increase)
- secured £34.8m in consumer redress for unauthorised investment business
Complaints data
We have published the most recent data on the volume of complaints reported by firms during the first half (H1) of 2022. We use the complaints data to help assess how well firms are treating their customers and how their performance changes over time.
Key findings include:
- In 2022 H1, financial services firms received 1.88m complaints, an increase of 1% on 2021 H2 (1.86m).
- After falling steadily since 2018, the total amount of redress rose for the first time from £262m in 2021 H2 to £278m in 2022 H1.
Visit our website for further information and data visualisations.
Financial Lives 2022 survey: insights on vulnerability and financial resilience relevant to the rising cost of living
We have published selected data, from our latest Financial Lives survey, on vulnerability and financial resilience, and insights into the financial positions of UK consumers in May 2022. This data contributes to the evidence base on the rising cost of living.
For our latest survey – Financial Lives 2022 – fieldwork ran from early February to early June, with a majority of the 19,145 interviews completed in May 2022. Although we are still analysing the data, we are providing selected statistics on vulnerability and financial resilience to give an insight into the financial positions of UK consumers in May of this year.
Key findings include:
- In May 2022, 12.9 million UK adults had low financial resilience – 1 in 4 (24%) of all UK adults. These are people who are in financial difficulty, or who could quickly find themselves in difficulty if they suffer a financial shock, because, for example, they have little to no savings or are heavily burdened by their domestic bills or credit commitments.
- This result is much worse than we recorded in our February 2020 Financial Lives survey. At that time, 10.7 million adults had low financial resilience, 2.2 million fewer than in May of this year.
- The main reason for this increase is a large jump in the proportion of adults who say they are heavily burdened by their domestic bills and credit commitments: 7.8 million adults (15% of all adults) felt this way in May this year, compared with 5.3 million adults (10%) in February 2020. This is not surprising, as there has been a significant increase in the cost of living in the latter half of 2021 and in 2022.
If you have any feedback or suggestions for future data publications, please do get in contact at fcadataandanalysis@fca.org.uk.
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