Keydata Investment Services promoted structured life settlement investment products to retail investors in the UK through independent financial advisors. The Upper Tribunal has now upheld the Financial Conduct Authority’s decision to fine its former CEO and sales director and ban them from financial services for life.

In November 2014 the regulator prohibited former CEO Stewart Ford and former sales director Mark Owen from performing any function in relation to any regulated activity carried on by an authorised person, exempt person or exempt professional firm. It fined Ford £75 million and Owen £4 million for contravening its Statement of Principle 1 (integrity) and Statement of Principle 4 (relations with regulators). They both referred their cases to the tribunal straight away.

Between 2005 and 2009 Keydata Investment Services Ltd distributed structured products designed for retail consumers through the IFA community. In 2005, Keydata began marketing products based on bonds issued by a Luxembourgeois company called SLS Capital SA and underpinned by US life settlement policies, but it did so without checking the products properly and by means of misleading brochures. In 2006, Ford replicated the SLS structure using a company, Lifemark, beneficially owned by himself. As a result, for the next three years, he was able to siphon off fees from the structure that came to about £73.3 million. The Upper Tribunal found that Lifemark received these payments either for "no services whatsoever" or "for services unrelated to [the Lifemark] products" and "could not be justified commercially." The tribunal also found that Owen received £2,540,787 in undisclosed commissions from Ford.

The tribunal has directed the FCA to fine Ford £76 million and Owen £3,240,787 - a slight reduction by just over £760,000, because the tribunal thought that the punitive element in his old fine was unjustified. Ford and Owen represented themselves.

This epic case featured contributions from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier of Luxembourg, the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, Finanzmarktaufsicht Liechtenstein, the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority and the Central Bank of Ireland.