U.K. Financial Services Industry Grapples with Uptick in Class Action Litigation and Regulatory Scrutiny

In one ongoing case, a large group of claimants is suing a bank under FSMA to recover losses allegedly caused by misleading investment information. The litigation spans more than 15 years of historical data, requiring complex, multi-jurisdictional e-discovery efforts to collect and analyse materials from numerous countries. The scope encompasses a wide range of custodians, keywords and potentially relevant information. The bank’s previous settlements, investigations and violations are being examined as potential evidence of how it misled the current group of claimants. Moreover, because the case is brought under FSMA, there are unique technical challenges in uncovering information relating to the investments, the market information the bank had shared with investors at the time of the transactions and how it may have influenced investor decisions.   

In this matter, and others like it, which require review of extensive and diverse historical transaction and marketing records, it’s essential to combine managed document review with technical analysis and analytics-powered workflows to efficiently and defensibly find relevant facts and information. FTI Technology’s teams have developed a powerful combination of workflows, technology, expertise and project management to uniquely address the challenges involved in complex FSMA investigations and litigations. 

Banks facing the possibility of a FSMA case can strengthen their readiness and response with the following:

• Early identification of facts: Leveraging analytic reviewers and workflows designed to quickly surface key information helps establish important themes and patterns within the document set to inform understanding of the matter’s scope, decision making for further document review and overall legal strategy.
• Flexible team structure: Traditionally, organisations will follow a linear process for first and second level reviews in a discovery exercise. However, in these unique matters, it’s more effective for reviewers to become deeply familiar with the context of the case over its lifetime, enabling concurrent workflows and insights through every phase.  
• Domain expertise: Document review teams should bring deep experience in the discovery process, technologies and in the nuances of FSMA and financial investigations.
• Advanced analytics: Expert-led technology is essential to consistently prioritise documents based on review outcomes. This helps to maximise review efficiency and automatically populate the review queue with the most important documents.
• Reporting: Ongoing insights relating to case progress, quality control and costs make it easier for counsel to manage issues, forecast case needs and make strategic decisions. 

FTI Technology’s approach delivered both high quality and cost efficiency. A low overturn rate between first-pass review and external counsel’s final decisions demonstrated the reliability of the workflows and the consistency of FTI Technology’s managed review teams. Document review costs were reduced by approximately 90%, without sacrificing quality or expert oversight, underscoring the value of FTI Technology’s integrated analytics and review strategy in complex, large-scale matters.

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The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of FTI Consulting, its management, its subsidiaries, its affiliates, or its other professionals.