The Personal Finance Society is to launch a campaign to “weed out” rogue firms operating in the Claims Management Company (CMC) sector.

The professional body with 40,000 members is collecting evidence about “ambulance chasers who negatively impact public confidence and trust in financial services.”

It will pass evidence to the Financial Conduct Authority.

The campaign comes as there are growing signs that CMCs are turning their attention to the financial advice profession following the ending of PPI claims.

The PFS says that while many CMCs operate professionally there are potentailly a small number of rogue firms tarnishing the sector.

The professional body says it recently shared evidence of a CMC “overstepping their regulatory permissions” and straying into offering financial advice to a consumer after being alerted and supplied with evidence  from a member.

The Personal Finance Society has written to members asking for any information they have on individual claims management companies that are operating outside of FCA rules.

In policy statement PS18/23, the FCA stated that CMCs must record all calls they have with clients, says the PFS.

The PFS believes because of this ruling it should be relatively simple to test whether CMC firms have strayed into area outside their permissions.

Keith Richards, chief executive of the Personal Finance Society, said: “Claims management is coming under increased regulatory scrutiny as the FCA continues to embed this sector into their supervisory approach.

“Many claims management companies are currently going through the re-authorisation process and information about bad practice may prove useful to the regulator when deciding whether certain firms should continue to operate.

“Claims management companies must not be allowed to stray into regulated financial advice or encourage consumers to make speculative compensation claims when there is no evidence of poor advice.

“Some very unethical tactics to ‘generate business’ has been employed over recent years which I am sure is limited to a minority within the CMC sector but it’s a behaviour which brings significant consequences for consumers, the advice profession and the wider CMC sector, which is why we are taking action to help stamp it out.”