Tony Hetherington

What he does outside the Panel

Tony is an investigative financial journalist with a weekly column in the Mail on Sunday and a midweek column published online by the Mail.

Positions held in the past

Tony says that his roles as milk monitor and secretary of the junior debating society at school prepared him well for his career in financial journalism and his work with the Panel. Before working at the Mail, he worked for The Times and The Sunday Times, as well as in television – for ITN and Thames Television.

Reasons for joining the Panel

There were areas where Tony thought the FSA ought to be more active, and joining the Panel has given him a modest voice to try to move things along.

Tony feels his separate roles as a journalist and Panel member complement each other – while he deals with individuals in his Mail columns, at the FSA he talks about the way the financial services system itself works. It gives Tony job satisfaction to see the sort of subjects discussed at the Panel translated into action by the FSA; sometimes the circumstances of an individual case can lead – months or even years later – to a change in the system. 

Areas of particular interest on the Panel

In his work on the Panel, Tony liaises particularly with the FSA's Enforcement Division and Crime & Intelligence Division, and with the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.  He is involved in the discussions about publishing FOS complaints data that names individual companies, and in pressing for gaps in the compensation scheme to be remedied.

The underlying theme of Tony’s interest is transparency – he feels that, in broad terms, consumers have the right to know the maximum information about any firm that is going to look after their money.

 

Photographs

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