Introduction

Peter Haines

It could be said that the reputation of the financial services industry has not truly recovered from the lows of the 2007/8 crisis, and the trust that was lost after the government-backed bailouts of banks has not yet been restored.

This book outlines a number of conduct scandals that have occupied the news, such as the mis-selling of mortgage-backed securities and payment protection insurance (PPI), rate rigging of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) and foreign exchange markets, to rogue trader events. At the time of writing, news had just broken of an impropriety at the large US bank Wells Fargo. Allegedly, an estimated two million falsified customer accounts were created without customers knowing, in order to hit sales targets. A fine of US$185 million had been issued, and around 5,300 employees had been fired, and the CEO resigned (Egan 2016).

In the light of such failings, the Dodd–Frank Act in the US merged consumer protection under a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2011 and the UK dismantled the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in 2013, implementing a new conduct-focused regulator called the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). These new organisations