"Standard Life Assurance Limited's controls needed to place fairness to customers at their heart. Here, the financial incentives available to staff for selling non-advised annuities by telephone created conflicts which led to unfair outcomes for some customers. Firms must have controls in place to ensure they are prioritising fairness to customers."
-Mark Steward, Executive Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight at the FCA
UK's Financial Conduct Authority said that Standard Life, some portion of Phoenix Group Holdings Plc, offered workers "huge monetary motivating forces to sell annuities, which urged them to put their own budgetary advantages in front of their clients." The organization neglected to screen the nature of calls between sales reps and customers to address manhandles.
The fine will be paid by Phoenix, which purchased Standard Life's annuity business a year ago, yet Phoenix will recover the cash from Standard Life Aberdeen.
Phoenix additionally has a £275m arrangement to subsidize pay for clients, of which £95m has just been paid out.
Susan McInnes, a chief at Phoenix, stated: "While this is a historic issue and one we were aware of when we acquired Standard Life Assurance Limited, we would like to apologise to affected customers, all of whom we have already been in contact with as part of the programme of customer redress."