The Financial Conduct Authority has set out how it plans to improve the confidence of whistleblowers hand over information to the regulator. 

The watchdog says it will provide whistleblowers with more detail on what has been done with the information provided — and its reasons for taking, or not taking, action. 

It will upgrade its webform hub, the most popular way that whistleblowers contact the FCA, to fully capture disclosures, as well as improving the use of this information across the body. 

And it will cooperate with the Department for Business and Trade in a review of whistleblower legislation to strengthen the wider whistleblowing system. 

The financial regulator says “whistleblowing provides the FCA with unique insights” that has allowed it to identify and correct problems, such as consumers being mis-sold loans, unauthorised firms taking on customers, and failings in the internal whistleblowing procedures of firms. 

FCA executive director of enforcement and market oversight Therese Chambers adds: “We need the intelligence whistleblowers provide to identify and act on problems in the firms we regulate.  

“We want to make sure we’re capturing and using the information provided by whistleblowers as effectively as possible, and to give them as much information as the law allows on how we have acted on their concerns.”