Reference Case Number: FOI11532
Freedom of Information: Right to know request:
Please provide information in relation to the British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS) transfers. Full details of your request can be found in Annex A below.
- Cost of research and consultation leading up to the design and implementation of scheme.
- Cost of running the scheme.
- Costs paid to external consultants for the scheme.
- Costs associated with Grant Thornton.
- Confirmation if the FCA has spent 118,000-man hours on the BSPS redress project and if there is an updated figure?
- The number of staff that were included in the BSPS Redress Teams.
- The number of phone calls that FCA staff made directly to former members of the BSPS.
- The number of times that the FCA referred former BSPS members to the Financial Ombudsman Scheme.
FCA response:
Our response is below.
Having reviewed your request, we estimate that responding to question 5 in full and question 6 would exceed the cost limit that applies to requests of this nature made to the FCA and therefore the exemption under section 12 (Cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit) applies. For more information on why this exemption applies to this question, please see Annex B below.
Question 1 and 3
We can confirm Professional fees cost (Legal, research and other consultancy) up to design and implementation was £1,757,019. These professional fees were paid to external suppliers.
Question 2
The cost of running the scheme was £5,114,195.
Question 4
We hold the information you requested but we are exempted from the duty to disclose it under section 43 of FOIA, as we are of the view that such disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of the firm in question. Therefore, section 43 (Commercial interests) applies. For more details on why this exemption applies please see Annex B below.
While we are unable to provide you with Grant Thornton’s costs, we would like to explain that there was no engagement with them over the BSPS redress calculator.
Questions 5
We can confirm that the 118,000-man hours spent on the BSPS redress provide was correct at the time of publishing. We are unable to provide you with an updated figure as the I-time code used for this project was closed, therefore, any colleagues that continued to work on the BSPS consumer redress scheme would have allocated their hours to the specific I-time code used for their business area.
Question 6
As advised above, it will exceed the cost limit to respond to these questions.
Question 7
As part of our supervisory work on firms in-scope of the scheme and their compliance with our rules, we conducted two outbound call campaigns.
Firstly, firms that determined the advice as suitable for consumers were required to provide us with the consumer’s contact details, unless consumers confirmed in writing that they do not wish for their details to be passed to us. As a result, we received 870 consumer contact details and attempted to contact all of them, reminding them of their right to refer their case to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) for an independent review if they were unhappy with the firms assessment.
Where firms reported a high proportion of consumers who had opted-out of the scheme, we attempted to contact these consumers to ensure firms were not pressuring them to opt out, and similarly, remind them of their right to refer their case to the FOS if they were unhappy with the firms decision. In total, 428 attempted calls were made.
In addition to the campaigns, we were likely to have conducted outbound calls to consumers following our in-person or virtual events, as agreed by consumers in attendance. On these occasions, we are unable to determine the volume of calls.
Question 8
In conjunction with question 7, we set out clear steps for firms in-scope of the scheme. We advised that they must inform consumers using prescribed scheme letters (see below link). The scheme letters contained reminders for consumers that were unhappy with the firms decision of their rights to refer their case to the FOS for a free independent review. All consumers (eligible for the scheme or not) would have therefore been notified by their firms of their rights to refer a case to the FOS.