FSA Mutuals Register

Submitted by drkane on Tue, 14/04/2015 - 23:44 | Updated on Fri, 26/06/2015 - 10:20
On behalf of NCVO (Voluntary sector or not-for-profit organisation)
Administration
Government
Policy
Status: 
Escalated to data holder
Publisher: 
HM Treasury
Notes: 

The requester and various other members of the open data community are chasing this request on Twitter

Data request description: 
I would like to download a copy of the register of Mutuals held by the FSA. The whole register is of interest, although I am specifically interested in whether data is held on which registered societies are "bencoms" and which are co-operatives.
Reason: 
The data is published but not in a format I can download and use (e.g. only displayed onscreen or only downloadable as a PDF rather than CVS)
Register is currently published here: https://mutuals.fsa.gov.uk/Search.aspx but cannot be accessed in bulk.
Suggested use: 
Business Use
Personal Use
Community Work
Research
Benefits overview: 
Opening this dataset would allow a hidden but crucial part of the economy to be uncovered. Mutuals and co-operatives are playing an increasing role in society and government policy, and yet basic data about them is not available.
 Flag as offensive 

Comments

I support this request

Posted by Owen Boswarva on Tue, 21/04/2015 - 11:47

This is an excellent request. The Mutuals Public Register should be available for re-use as bulk open data. (So for that matter should the Financial Services Register.)

Note: the FSA has now been split into two separate regulatory authorities, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority at Bank of England.

-- Owen Boswarva, 21/04/2015

 Flag as offensive 

Agree

Posted by Paul Malyon on Thu, 14/05/2015 - 14:18

Agree completely that access to this dataset is extremely important as it fills a significant gap in UK Companies data and would prevent a number of issues that users of UK business information have.

Should be no reason that a feed can not be supplied to Companies House and included in their data to prevent the creation of a second source of information.

 Flag as offensive 

Tracking regional organisations

Posted by ekoner on Thu, 25/06/2015 - 18:54

This information is crucial to tracking organisations in the North of England, especially with the advent of the Northern Powerhouse. Lack of open data means gaps in our understanding of the North's economy ecosystem. 

 Flag as offensive 

I support this

Posted by xavriley on Thu, 25/06/2015 - 19:11

Having the data in a bulk format not only creates business opportunities for those who can add value, but will also help the FCA in validating and verifying the data if it is scrutinised by a wider audience.

There would also be value in having a definitive data source for mutuals and similar financial groups in a format that can be updated in a practical way.

 Flag as offensive 

I support this request

Posted by TimDavies on Tue, 21/07/2015 - 10:59

Access to the Mutual Register would be of great value in understanding the co-operative economy. 

 Flag as offensive 

Update on progress

Posted by jaCattell on Wed, 22/07/2015 - 14:45

I visited the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on Wednesday 22 July 2015 and had a useful discussion with a member of the Mutuals Team.

I informed them that:

  • what people ideally wanted was to be able to download an extract of the public register automatically
  • last year the Government had a fund available for digitisation of records, and that I’d let them know if any further funding became available\
  • there is an organisation scraping data from the mutuals public register and that I feel this should be a driver for the FCA making the data more readily accessible because it would be preferable if it came from the FCA rather than elsewhere

The FCA explained that:

  • they are required to place certain documents for mutual societies on a public file (the Mutuals Public Register)
  • as an industry funded body they recover the costs for doing this by charging a reasonable fee
  • many of the society files are already online on the public register available for download, but a significant number are still stored on paper. It is therefore a labour-intensive manual task to respond to requests for public documents. Ideally they would like to digitise these records but need to establish a way and means of doing this. They have records dating back to the early 1800s so this is a big task
  • people can request a list of societies, the list includes the society name, registration number and registered office address. The list should be requested using their electronic order form, will cost £12, and people should receive the list within 7 working days. This is the only way to obtain this data
  • they consulted on lowering the fee for documents (and lists) from £12 to £1. The feedback and their response to that consultation can be found on page 69 of this document
  • much of the Mutuals Public Register was built in 2006. While there have been a series of developments and improvements over time the underlying technology remains the same. They have to work within the constraints that creates. The system hosting the Mutuals Public Register contains both public and confidential data, therefore access is restricted to the FCA
  • the reporting functionality is SQL based. They would like to improve our reporting functionality but they don’t know if/when that will happen. But if people do have suggestions as to what they’d like to see they’d be grateful to receive those
 Flag as offensive 

Building a coop data standard

Posted by KarinC on Thu, 23/07/2015 - 16:47

This needs to happen urgently but from a series of discussion, we need the first step to be a bit of standard development.  A group of us have been talking about this, so if interested please get in touch k.christiansen@party.coop

 Flag as offensive 
Login to make a comment