I just heard the news on Barclays. Are there other banks that are going to face fines for investment mis-selling?

Time will tell, though the answer must really be 'when and how much?' rather than 'if'.. Overall, some 2% of all complaints are against IFAs, with about 60% of all complaints levelled against banks. Of course, not all of those complaints are upheld for either sector, and the banks are very large institutions which have many more customers (by the way, IFAs have clients and not customers, so that may tell you something).

Banks are heavily sales oriented, and put sales pressure on their staff - during my sorry time as a bank financial adviser, I was expected to sell a certain number of various products, irrespective of whether they were truly suitable or of decent quality. That was 12 years ago, so some of the customers may still have some of those products; although I hope I did not mis-sell anything. If I or my colleagues had fully succumbed to the pressure placed upon us, then anyone holding the products might well have cause for complaint.

Not having worked in a bank recently, I cannot say how much this pressure exists, but if bank advisers have any form of bonus or commission in addition to their basic salary then the temptation for mis-selling will always be there.

There is not much pressure for the banks to create good products or to sell suitable ones; they make huge profits and are very powerful organisations which I find difficult to respect. The FSA and other organisations did not manage to prevent the massive international financial problems in which banks featured prominently, and I can only hope that signals such as t big fines will both help to control the banks and to open their behaviour to public knowledge and scrutiny

many financial institutions have in the past been fined by the FSA but the part that is usually hushed is the amount of redress or compensation, which in Barclays case is said to be around £16m - double the fine.

providers are also given a discount to their eventual fine by assisting the investigation so the Barclays fine could have easily otherwise been over £10m.

but there are many occasions where consumer complaints are not upheld, usually those fuelled by ambulance chasers.

the ironic part of all this is that complaints against banks and building societies make up the vast majority of complaints, including those upheld, and yet they dont contribute to the FSA in terms of their levy in the same proportion. IFA complaints account for approximately 2.5% of all complaints yet the IFA sector pays much more than 2.5% of the cost to the scheme!

I would say undoubtedly, but I wouldn't be as brave as naming any. As David mentioned, there is a lot of pressure to meet sales targets and this eventually backfires on the bank. There has been a lot of investigation into the high profit sales of Mortgage Protection Plans and how they were sold.

Furthermore, only last week, I was at a seminar with a top FSA manager who outlined what they are looking at and targeting. If I was a bank, I would be very worried.