The FCA has banned IFA Jon Frensham of Frensham Wealth Limited from performing any regulated activity after finding him ‘not a fit and proper person.’

The FCA said the ban on Mr Frensham (formerly known as Jonathan James Hunt) follows a conviction for child sexual grooming involving an approach to a girl he believed was 15.

Mr Frensham was sole director at Frensham Wealth Limited and has appealed the decision. He is listed on LinkedIn as a Chartered Financial Planner with his firm based in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.

The FCA has provisionally announced the withdrawal of his approval to perform his current senior management functions and has made an order prohibiting him from performing any functions in relation to regulated activity.

Mr Frensham has appealed the Decision Notice to the Upper Tribunal where he and the FCA will put their cases. 

The tribunal will determine what, if any, is the appropriate action for the FCA to take. In the meantime the ban will have no effect pending the determination of the case by the Tribunal. 

In March 2017, Mr Frensham was convicted of attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming. He committed this offence while he was an approved person. He was sentenced to 22 months’ in prison, suspended for 18 months.

According to the decision notice, in September 2016 Mr Frensham communicated online with someone he believed to be a 15-year-old girl. His messages were sometimes sexual in nature. He offered to buy gifts for the person he was communicating with and encouraged her to lie to her mother. He arranged to meet her and travelled to meet her with the intention of engaging in sexual activity. She was actually an adult woman from a vigilante group posing as a child. The police were called and he was arrested.

The sentencing judge said that Mr Frensham, “showed no remorse about your decision to meet a 15-year-old girl.” He was made subject to an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order and required to sign the sex offenders’ register.

The FCA says that due to the nature and circumstances of his offence, it considers he is not a fit and proper person to perform any function in relation to any regulated activity carried on by any authorised or exempt persons or exempt professional persons. This is because he lacks the “necessary integrity and reputation.”

The FCA said that as a result of his offending Mr Frensham poses a risk to consumers and to confidence in the financial system and it considers it appropriate to withdraw his approval to perform senior management functions and to impose a prohibition order on him.