Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the UK financial regulation myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
The UK financial watchdog has announced it is investigating a claims management company that promised to recover thousands of pounds for victims of alleged car finance mis-selling in adverts featuring heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury.
The Financial Conduct Authority said on Friday it had opened its enforcement probe into The Claims Protection Agency Limited over “concerns about its advertising and sales tactics”.
The watchdog made the announcement after overturning a legal challenge by the company against the FCA’s recently enhanced powers to “name and shame” the targets of its investigations.
It is the first time the regulator has publicly announced an investigation into one of the many claims management companies that have seized on the controversy over alleged mis-selling of car finance to bring millions of claims on behalf of consumers.
The Claims Protection Agency — which used several trading names, including My Claim Group, Martin’s Tips, Karen’s Claims, Express PCP and The PCP Guys — advertised heavily, offering to pursue car finance compensation cases.
Fury, a former world heavyweight champion boxer, became the “ambassador” for My Claim Group, saying in a video ad on Facebook that he was fighting “to claim back what is rightfully ours” and stating people “could be owed up to £4,000 in compensation”. My Claim Group did not respond to a request for comment.
The FCA said it was “investigating what customers were told about the amount of redress they might obtain, whether they were told they could make a claim for free and whether they were pressurised to sign up”.
The watchdog, which is setting up an industry-wide scheme for lenders to handle claims from car finance customers for free, is worried people will lose out with claims management companies that can charge fees of up to 30 per cent of any compensation awarded.
Its decision to announce the investigation into The Claims Protection Agency would allow its customers “to consider their options”, the FCA said, adding that it had “not reached any conclusions” on whether the company had breached regulatory requirements.
The watchdog has estimated its redress scheme will pay about £700 per claim on average, leading to overall payouts worth a total of about £8.2bn.
The FCA wrote to The Claims Protection Agency, raising concerns about its adverts and sales tactics in August 2025, prompting the company to stop accepting new customers or publishing any new financial promotions and to remove all existing financial promotions.
When the watchdog subsequently informed the claims manager of its plans to publicly announce an investigation, it challenged the decision via a judicial review in the High Court.
Mr Justice Fordham rejected the challenge, saying that identifying the company would “most effectively get through to the claimant’s customers with a message that they needed to receive from the regulator”.
The FCA last year sought to introduce a public interest test that would allow it to publicly name more companies it investigates. But after this stirred controversy, the watchdog abandoned much of the plan, sticking to its “exceptional circumstances” test of when to disclose which companies it is probing.
The watchdog gave itself the ability to make anonymised announcements that identify the sector and concerns but not the company being investigated, as well as naming unregulated companies it investigates and probes that are already disclosed elsewhere.