Equitable Life: a decade of regulatory failure, fourth report session 2007-08: 2007-08 815-i-v (House of Commons papers)

In this report, "Equitable Life: ten year's of regulatory failure", the Ombudsman makes ten determinations of maladministration on the part of the former Department of Trade and Industry, the Government Actuary's Department, and the Financial Services Authority, in relation to their regulation of Equitable in the period before 1 December 2001. In addition to upholding several specific complaints, the Ombudsman has upheld a general complaint, about the period before Equitable closed to new business on 8 December 2000, that the public bodies responsible for the prudential regulation of insurance companies and the Government Actuary's Department failed for considerably longer than a decade properly to exercise their regulatory functions in respect of Equitable Life. This was not a system failure but a failure properly to implement the system of regulation that Parliament had enacted. Finding that injustice resulted from maladministration, the Ombudsman recommends that a compensation scheme should be established to assess the individual cases of Equitable's current and former policyholders, with a view to paying compensation to remedy any financial losses which would not have been suffered had those people invested elsewhere than with Equitable.