On Tuesday 8th July BBC Radio 4 broadcast a documentary revealing some shocking facts about the true car finance scandal. This is not the scandal that will now see millions of UK consumers receive approximately £15billion in redress as a result of a new investigation by the FCA launched in January 2024 after the Financial Ombudsman Service upheld two complaints specific to incentivised commission arrangements between car finance lenders and their networks of car dealer agents/brokers.

The true scandal is that there is nothing the FCA knew as of January 2024 that they did not know in February 2016 and that they certainly did not know in March 2019 when, it is alleged by Paul Carlier, “the FCA produced what they knew to be a dishonestly limited final notice following their two year investigation of car finance and intended to protect the firms and their reputations and deprive the millions of UK consumers who they knew to have been damaged of the billions of pounds in redress that the FCA knew they were owed. I know, because I made comprehensive reports to the FCA between February 2016 and September 2016 all supported by various smoking gun evidence”

At this Transparency Task Force event Paul will be presenting the BBC documentary and provide a deep dive into it, filling in any gaps and personally presenting the evidence and reports he shared with The FCA. This includes audio recordings of calls he had with The FCA in 2016 and an extraordinary call he had with Black Horse after they and the Financial Ombudsman Service had lied to him repeatedly, where “I went undercover’ and posed as a used car dealer currently using one of Black Horse’s competitors for our fianance solutions, hoping they would spill all of the beans to me proving unequivocally that this unlawful incentivised commissions scam was being used, the scale it was being used and the way in which this scam worked. The spilled every sordid bean on that call.”

If you are a UK consumer of any financial services product or the victim of any financial scandal involving the FCA, you won’t want to miss this. 

You will also not want to miss the other special event being run by Transparency Taks Force on Monday 14th July (see here) specific to the role of the Financial Ombudsman Service in the true car finance scandal. This event will also feature a presentation by Paul where he will expose this shocking element of the true scandal. To quote Paul;

“Think the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) is independent and objective? Think again. These car finance firms were using multiple unlawful practises and the FCA produced what they knew to be a dishonestly limited final notice in 2019 to protect those firms and to deprive the victims of redress. However, as bad as that is and was, it is the role the FOS played in that ‘cover up’ that is arguable the most despicable and the greatest betrayal of UK consumers.”