Financial Conduct Authority ‘upping its game’ to shut down online scams | Business

The City regulator is cracking down on online scams by aiming to spot suspicious advertisements offering “too good to be true” investments within a day of them appearing on the internet.

Mark Steward, the Financial Conduct Authority’s executive director of enforcement and market oversight, said that the watchdog was “upping its game” against fraudulent investment scams.

The FCA had increased “proactive monitoring of the internet” and was getting faster at identifying suspicious adverts, issuing warnings to the public and contacting online platforms to have the marketing removed, he said.

The authority has published 632 alerts about investment scams this year, compared with 1,204 specific warnings for the whole of last year.

“We have moved from responses within days to being able to issue warnings on