Under an innocuous-looking sign on its website saying 'Chair's statement fines - not compliant,' the United Kingdom's Pensions Regulator states that it has fined the Financial Conduct Authority's pension plan £2,000 for breaking the rules.

A TPR spokesman agreed that this was a surprising turn of events and told Compliance Matters: "It's a mandatory fine - we must fine them, it's the law. The starting fine is £500, then it goes up according to the number of members in the scheme. The chairman must send us a statement that reports on the governance of the scheme, but sometimes he doesn't send one or he fills it in wrongly. In this case it's the latter. He didn't include all the information he should have."

Scarcely less surprising is the entry next to the FCA's, which states that TPR has fined the Accenture Retirement Savings Plan the same amount, which is the maximum possible. Accenture is originally a spin-off from the old accountancy firm of Arthur Andersen and prides itself on helping financial firms achieve compliance with regulations. The FCA is well-known for glitches in its handling of business and will no doubt carry on obliging firms to pay it tribute in the form of 'fees' however badly it makes mistakes, but Accenture relies on its public image as a fount of compliance expertise in order to earn much of its income. This revelation might be very damaging for it.