FCA wants banks to fund FX fines out of their bonuses

The banks involved in the foreign exchange rigging scandal should fund their fines out of this year's bonuses, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has said.

Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), HSBC, JP Morgan and UBS were fined a combined £1.1bn by the FCA in November for allowing traders to manipulate foreign exchange rates at the expense of customers.

“We would expect firms to think hard about this in the current bonus round,” Clive Adamson, the FCA’s director of supervision, said when announcing the fines.

RBS and HSBC were fined £217m and £216.4m respectively, and the five banks that were fined, as well as Bank of America, were fined an additional £1.6bn by US and Swiss authorities.

In 2012, RBS slashed its bonuses by over than £300m in the wake of a £390m fine for its role in the Libor scandal,while the bank’s total bonus pool amounted to £588m in 2013, which would go some way towards covering the most recent fine it received from the FCA.

Meanwhile, HSBC had a bonus pool of just over £2bn last year.

Financial authorities have stressed the importance of punishing individuals for misconduct rather than the lenders, with Andrew Bailey, the head of the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority suggesting that if banks have to fund the fines themselves, capital positions could be under threat.