The FCA’s motor finance CMC investigation escalated in June 2026, with the UK regulator opening a formal enforcement probe into Liverpool-based Consultation Claims Limited (CCL) — the second claims management company targeted in six months — as the motor finance redress scheme enters its live claims phase.
The regulator’s move confirms a deliberate sequencing: the £7.5 billion motor finance redress scheme, covering 12.1 million eligible agreements, is operating in parallel with an intensifying crackdown on the CMC supply chain that feeds it. For lenders, brokers, and intermediaries with CMC relationships, that parallel is now a direct operational and reputational exposure.
Consent Fraud and Forged Signatures: What the FCA Found at CCL
The FCA’s probe centres on CCL’s conduct during the period April 2025 to December 2025. The regulator says it has concerns that consumers were signed up without their consent and that some signatures may have been forged — a pattern that, if confirmed, would mean CCL generated a caseload on invalid foundations. The FCA has not yet reached conclusions on whether CCL has breached any relevant regulatory requirements.
Before opening the formal investigation, the FCA moved quickly: CCL accepted a Voluntary Requirement (VREQ) effective from 8 December 2025 to 2 March 2026, freezing new customer intake and requiring the firm to write to all existing clients offering free cancellation. The VREQ-then-investigate sequence is now a proven enforcement template. When the FCA targeted The Claims Protection Agency Limited (TCPA) in January 2026 — the first CMC enforcement in the motor finance context — the same approach was deployed. TCPA challenged the FCA via judicial review; the High Court dismissed the application on 23 October 2025, and the Court of Appeal refused permission to appeal on 19 December 2025. CCL is the second test of the same playbook.
The TCPA Precedent: Serial CMC Enforcement as a Market Signal
Two enforcement investigations in six months are not random events. Since January 2024, the FCA has removed or amended over 740 misleading advertisements from regulated claims management companies — a baseline enforcement effort that tightened progressively as the volume of motor finance claims grew. TCPA operates under trading names including My Claim Group, Martin’s Tips, Karen’s Claims, Express PCP, and The PCP Guys, illustrating the multi-brand complexity the FCA must navigate in monitoring CMC conduct.
In this context, the FCA’s broader CMC conduct review — which brought Consumer Duty standards to claims handling — was a precursor, not a conclusion. The CCL probe moves from supervisory review to active enforcement at exactly the moment the motor finance redress ecosystem becomes a live market for CMC-originated claims. The regulator is closing the window before it opens.
The Motor Finance Redress Scheme and the CMC Fee Drain
The economic stakes explain the conduct pressure. The FCA’s confirmed motor finance redress scheme pays an average of £829 per eligible agreement. Total scheme costs to firms are estimated at £9.1 billion, including £1.6 billion in non-redress administrative costs. At up to 30% fee deduction from any successful payout, a regulated CMC operating at scale in this market can generate substantial revenues from a compensation pool that consumers could access for free.
The FCA’s response has been multi-layered. Beyond the two enforcement investigations, the regulator and its partners have made tangible progress in curbing supply-chain abuse: the joint taskforce removed or amended 800 misleading advertisements, helped more than 28,000 consumers exit CMC contracts free of charge, and prompted three CMCs to cut fees protecting more than 500,000 consumers. Earlier intervention on termination fee policies similarly protected 70,000 consumers after two FCA-regulated CMCs agreed to modify their fee structures.
Four Regulators, One Taskforce: The Cross-Agency Architecture
The FCA-SRA-ICO-ASA joint taskforce, launched in March 2026, signals that CMC enforcement is now a coordinated multi-agency priority rather than a single-regulator issue. The SRA’s role is particularly significant: the SRA had 89 open investigations covering 71 law firms and has closed 7 firms operating in high-volume motor finance claims. Law firms that package claims alongside CMCs — providing legal cover for volume processing — are simultaneously under FCA and SRA oversight.
For the broader market, the taskforce model has implications beyond motor finance. As the FCA continues its crackdown on fraudulent motor insurance intermediaries, the CCL probe demonstrates that cross-sector conduct concerns — consent fraud, misleading advertising, aggressive fee structures — now attract coordinated multi-regulator attention. Any broker or lender with commercial referral relationships with CMCs should treat the joint taskforce as a structural warning about supply-chain conduct liability.
