Money, in brief

CACEIS UK, a bank that keeps other firms' clients' assets safe, will pay 31.7m pounds to clients of WealthTek. Britain's financial regulator, the FCA, censured it in June and did not fine it. [1]

With that payment the FCA says it has secured over 57m pounds for WealthTek clients in just over a year, from CACEIS UK, Sapia Partners and Barclays Bank UK. [1]

WealthTek was a wealth management firm that looked after ordinary people's investments. It went into a special administration on 6 April 2023. [3]

In December 2024 the FCA charged WealthTek's principal partner with criminal offences including money laundering and fraud. [2]

CACEIS UK became WealthTek's sub-custodian in November 2020. On three occasions it checked the Financial Services Register, which showed WealthTek was not authorised to hold certain client assets. It did not take sufficient action. [1]

It also did not spot that WealthTek was not allowed to hold client money. It opened client accounts for WealthTek to use, then failed to review alerts its own system raised. [1]

Sapia Partners, the authorised firm that WealthTek worked under from 2013, agreed in April to pay 19,637,950 pounds. WealthTek staff approved each payment out of the client accounts. WealthTek staff also ran the checks on those accounts, so nobody outside ever looked. [2][3]

The FCA says it would have fined Sapia 10.6m pounds, cut to 7.4m for settling early. It chose a public censure instead because Sapia cooperated and paid up. [3]

About 150m pounds passed through Sapia's client money accounts between 2014 and 2020 while the failings lasted. [3]

The payments go to WealthTek clients who have not been able to get all their money back. [1]

Why it matters. The next thing to watch is the criminal case against WealthTek's principal partner, charged in December 2024, and whether the payments already agreed close the gap for every client who is still short. [2][1]

In July the FCA published the results of 298 mystery shops at the banks that must offer basic accounts. It rated 28% of the visits good or very good, 38% fair, 20% poor and 14% very poor. [4] A basic bank account has no overdraft and no fees, and the nine largest providers must offer one by law. [4] In 29% of visits staff did not mention it until asked, and in about 15% never at all. [4] Overall 62% of shoppers left with no clear way to apply, and the banks have now promised to fix this. [4]

Why it matters. About 4.3 million adults in the UK have one of these accounts, which are what wages and benefits get paid into, and 900,000 adults still have no current account at all. [4]

On 11 March Revolut, a money app with 13 million UK customers, got a full banking licence from the Prudential Regulation Authority, the part of the Bank of England that licenses banks. [5][6] It applied in 2021 and got a restricted licence in 2024, which let it test with a few customers and hold no more than 50,000 pounds of deposits in total. [5] It can now offer protected deposit accounts, loans and overdrafts at scale. [6] It has also applied for a US banking licence. [7] The Bank of England counts 69 banks authorised since 2013. [22]

Why it matters. For a customer, the change is that Revolut can now hold their deposits in protected accounts without the 50,000 pound total cap of the restricted licence. [6][5]

In May the FCA launched a review of claims management companies, the firms that pursue compensation for people in return for a share of the payout. [8] It said some used misleading adverts and unfair exit fees, and some signed people up without permission. [8] These firms have targeted victims of the car finance scandal, where they can charge up to 33% of a payout the regulator's own scheme provides free. [8] By May the FCA had removed or changed 800 misleading adverts and helped 28,000 people leave contracts free. [8] It has since opened a market study with the solicitors' regulator. [9]

Why it matters. Millions of drivers are due car finance payouts, and every pound a claims firm takes is a pound the driver does not get. [8]

In December the FCA fined Nationwide, a building society, 44m pounds for weak checks on financial crime between October 2016 and July 2021. [21] Nationwide knew some customers were running businesses through personal accounts, which its own terms banned, and had no process for the risk that created. [21] One customer used personal accounts to receive 24 fraudulent Covid furlough payments worth 27.3m pounds over 13 months, 26m of it in eight days. [20] The tax authority clawed back 26.5m pounds; about 800,000 pounds is still unrecovered. [20]

Why it matters. The 800,000 pounds that was never recovered came from UK taxpayers, and the failures ran for nearly five years before Nationwide fixed its systems. [20]

On 4 March the FCA fined John Wood Group, a company listed on the stock market, 12,993,700 pounds for publishing inaccurate results for 2022, 2023 and the first half of 2024. [10] After some projects went badly, its accounting choices were shaped by a wish to keep the results it had already announced. [10] The share price fell 78% by April 2025 and the shares were suspended that May. [10] The company accepted the findings and got 30% off. [10] That one fine is most of the 17,956,123 pounds the FCA has fined in 2026 so far. [11]

Why it matters. Investors relied on those numbers, the FCA said, and anyone holding the shares watched them lose 78% of their value before trading stopped. [10]

On 19 January the Upper Tribunal, a court that hears appeals against the regulator, upheld the FCA's ban on Darren Reynolds and his fine of 2,037,892 pounds. [12] Reynolds advised members of the British Steel Pension Scheme to give up a guaranteed pension for high-risk investments, knowing the advice was wholly unsuitable, and hid high exit fees. [12] He lied to regulators and moved his family home into a trust to avoid paying his debts. [12] More than 17.6m pounds has been paid in compensation to more than 470 of his customers. [12]

Why it matters. Many of those customers lost more than the compensation scheme's limit, so the difference is gone. The FCA says it will bankrupt him if needed to recover the fine. [12]

On 6 March Nationwide, HSBC and Coventry Building Society raised some fixed mortgage rates after the war with Iran pushed up oil and gas prices. [13] Lenders price fixed deals off market bets on the Bank of England's rate, and those bets swung from a cut to a 70% chance of a rise. [14] The average two-year fix was 4.84% and the five-year 4.96% that week. [13] By July both had fallen back to 5.52%, their lowest since early March, with the Bank's rate unchanged at 3.75% all year. [15]

Why it matters. The people hit hardest are those whose five-year deals from before the rate rises are ending now, because their new rate is set by these swings and not by the Bank's rate. [14]

In February Halifax, Britain's biggest mortgage lender, said the average UK house price reached 300,077 pounds in January, the first time it had passed 300,000. [16] Prices rose 0.7% in the month and 1% over the year. [16] Surveys count differently: Nationwide put January's average at 270,873 pounds, and the official statistics office put November's at 271,000. [16] Halifax said wages had risen faster than prices since 2022 and expected a rise of 1% to 3% this year. [16] By July forecasters had cut those numbers, and Savills expected a fall. [15]

Why it matters. Halifax itself called the milestone potentially daunting for first-time buyers, while saying wages rising faster than prices since 2022 slowly helps them. [16]

The US Treasury launched a mobile app for Trump Accounts, a new tax-deferred savings account for children, shortly before the accounts opened on 4 July. [17] Families enrol at TrumpAccounts.gov, on Form 4547, or in their online IRS account. [17][18][19] Children born from 2025 to 2028 with a Social Security number get a one-off 1,000 dollars from the US government. Parents and employers can add up to 5,000 dollars a year between them. [17][18] More than 4 million children had been signed up when the app went live, and 1 million had claimed the 1,000 dollars. [18]

Why it matters. The accounts are meant for a child's later costs such as college or a first home, so the money is designed to sit and grow for years. [18][17]