Do you ever use the Financial Services Register - and what do you think?

Have you ever used the register to check out a firm and what did you think?

Yes. i use it to look up my FSA number from time to time as I dont know it off by heart as it is rarely used (compared to the firm FSA number which is)
I also use it to check whether some of these dodgy scam/cold calling firms (particularly pension liberation/unregulated investment cold calling introducers are on there - usually not).

Could you easily find the info you wanted?

yes.

* Was the info clear enough?

For me yes. However, I can imagine a retail consumer would not understand a lot of it and a lot of the information that is spread over multiple links could be held on a single page. Indeed, all of the data could be held on a single page (permissions, principles etc)

* What else would you like it to do / provide?

Based on the data that the FCA collect, it would be difficult to see what extra you could display that would benefit an end consumer whilst maintaining the right for some personal protection of the private details of those listed on the site. I, for example, have an email address that is unique to the FSA register. I do not use it elsewhere. However, I have had spams sent to me on that email address which indicates that the site is trawled for data for spammers.

I think some of the terms and jargon should be clarified. I am CF30 but that means nothing to a retail consumer. CF30 covers wider areas than the older classifications. So, a glossary of terms or an explanation of the what codes or jargon means may be useful. I doubt many consumers known what a principle means in FCA regulation terms or when it says "taken up" next to the firm name entry. The fact the start dates of a control function do not match the dates that regulated individuals may have been authorised to carry out their roles should be mentioned as I have had that raised by a client before who questioned my history as he was using the CF30 date and not the dates of the CF21 that was replaced by CF30. Also, as the register didnt exist before 1/12/2001, the start dates cannot be an earlier than that. So, again that should be mentioned as a limitation.

The FCA has issued a couple of reviews to intermediary initial disclosure to make it clear and easy to understand. If it applied those principles to the FSA register then it have no choice but to say it uses jargon without explanation and contains errors (due to system limitations) that are not explained.

* Do you like having the ability to look up details on financial providers?

yes for checking they are authorised.

As for suggestions my first one would be that it is combined with the list of unauthorised firms (known/suspected scams) here:
http://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/prot...firms-to-avoid
such that when a company name is entered it shows up matches there too. That would be particularly useful for companies that create names very like genuine companies. If both came up on a name search it would make the user more careful to check which one they were dealing with.

I like that. It is actually currently easier to find a regulated firm listed on the FCA site than it is to find a firm that is on the watch list. You just need to look at this site and see that most people do not have problems with authorised firms. It is the unauthorised firms pretending to be something they are not. We are just a small firm in Norfolk and this year alone we have seen multiple fraudulent actions by unregulated firms (which we have reported). There cant be many people posting on this site who have not had phone calls from firms offering "free pension reviews" who turn out to be unregulated companies selling storage pods, overseas property or bio fuels and telling people that their pension is actually losing money (when it isnt) as they use the low projection rate (which is now negative in many cases) on the statements. Putting the dodgy firms on the register search with nice big warnings to go with it would be far more useful than the register is now.