The annual report, published on 30 July 2024, covers the whistleblowing disclosures received by the Bank of England (BoE) and the PRA during the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024. A worker can make a disclosure to a Prescribed Person if they feel they cannot disclose directly to their employer, or where they have reported their concern to their employer but do not believe it has acted appropriately to address it.
The FCA will also publish a statutory annual report covering the same period, but has yet to do so. Over the past four years the FCA has consistently received over 1000 whistleblowing disclosures annually, which is considerably more than the BoE and PRA.
Points of interest include:
- The BoE and PRA received a total of 240 disclosures that were subject to assessment, against the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (PIDA) and BoE and PRA statutory requirements.
- The BoE and PRA reasonably believed that 228 disclosures were protected disclosures within section 43B of the Employment Rights Act 1996. The remaining 12 disclosures were not protected disclosures.
- All the protected disclosures were the subject of supervisory consideration.
- Of the 228 protected disclosures that were subject to supervisory consideration, 14 disclosures contributed to significant regulatory or supervisory activity, 55 disclosures provided intelligence of prudential value and 39 disclosures provided intelligence that was retained for future reference, but is not currently actionable. A further 120 disclosures are currently subject to ongoing supervisory assessment.
- Regardless of the statutory basis of any disclosures, the information provided through the whistleblowing channel can contain vital information to further supervisory assessments. The BoE and PRA therefore provided supervisory colleagues with all disclosures (protected and non-protected) to either consider or for information purposes.
- The report also contains three case studies that the BoE and PRA describe as anonymised examples of the concerns reported and the action taken by their Whistleblowing Team. The anonymous firms featured in the case studies cover allegations of sexual misconduct by a senior manager of a bank, the misuse of policyholder funds, and concerns of financial sustainability due to poor performance and inadequate governance and controls.
What does this mean for employers?
The number of disclosures received has increased since the last report. Last year 197 disclosures were received, 189 of which were reasonably believed to be protected disclosures. Last year three disclosures contributed to significant regulatory or supervisory activity. Both last year and this year this is less than 1% of disclosures, but this year the percentage has doubled. These figures accord with the trends we are seeing in practice: that there are more whistleblowers coming forward and the Regulators are taking more of these complaints seriously.
