Three former senior executives of an insurance firm will have to cough up nearly £1million in fines.

The Financial Conduct Authority has fined the trio who used to work for Swinton Group Limited £928,000. The penalties follow previous enforcement action taken against Swinton, which in 2013, was fined £7.4m after it adopted an aggressive sales strategy.
This resulted in mis-sales of monthly add-on insurance policies, the FCA said. In 2009 the firm was fined £770,000 for failures in its sales of PPI.

{desktop}{/desktop}{mobile}{/mobile}

Peter Halpin, the former chief executive, has been banned from acting as chief executive of a financial services firm, while Anthony Clare (former finance director) and Nicholas Bowyer (former marketing director) have been banned from performing significant influencing functions at financial services firms.
The FCA said it found that a sales-focused culture in Swinton was "encouraged by Clare and Bowyer driving a business strategy that was designed to boost the firm's profits in 2011."
The regulator said: "The three former directors did not recognise the risk of this culture developing or take reasonable steps to prevent it."
Swinton's participating directors (including these three directors) stood to gain a bonus of approximately £90million under the directors share scheme if operating profits reached £110million in 2011.
The trio, fined today, would have benefited significantly under the scheme had these results been achieved.

The fines were dished out in the following ways:

• Mr Halpin has been fined £412,700 in addition to a ban from acting as a CEO of an FCA authorised firm because of "a lack of competence in his FCA approved CEO role".
• Mr Bowyer has been fined £306,700 and banned from performing any significant influence function at an FCA authorised firm, because of "a lack of competence as an FCA approved director".
• Mr Clare has been fined £208,600 and is now banned from holding a position of significant influence in an FCA authorised firm because of a "lack of competence as an FCA approved director".

All three former directors settled at an early stage of the FCA's investigation and therefore qualified for a 30 per cent discount on their fines.
Tracey McDermott, director of enforcement and financial crime at the FCA, said: "A culture was allowed to develop within Swinton that pushed for high sales and increased profit without regard to the impact on the firm's customers.
"We expect firms to put customers at the heart of their business.
"These three directors should have recognised the risk to customers and redressed the balance so that the drive to maximise profits did not jeopardise the fair treatment of customers.
"Those with significant influence within firms are responsible for setting the tone and the culture; they set the example that others will follow. Today's enforcement action should serve as a timely reminder to those at the very top of firms that the FCA is determined to hold individuals to account where they fall short of the standard we require."

Get FREE daily news summaries direct to your inbox. Sign up on the homepage now.

Follow us on Twitter and get frequent news alerts @FPM_online.

Or follow Editor Kevin O'Donnell - @FPM_Kevin or staff writer James Nadal - @FPM_James.

For the latest Sipp, SSAS and retirement news visit our sister news site www.sippsprofessional.co.uk and on Twitter @SippsPro.