FCA issues latest warning on a clone firm

The FCA has warned of a clone firm falsely purporting to be part of broker Protect Your Bubble.

Protect Your Bubble, which trades as Assurant Direct, is an FCA authorised broker offering mobile phone, gadget and jewellery cover, targetting students with a 15% discount. Its website claims to have over 1m customers, offering insurance online in less than three minutes.

The unauthorised clone firm is using a very similar website domain name and an email address including the words ‘protectyourbubble’.

James Brown, director at Protect Your Bubble said: “We became aware of some potential clone activity which we reported to the FCA. We are working closely with the relevant authorities to support their investigations into this activity. 

“Our staff here at Protect Your Bubble never engage in cold-calling to conduct sales activity.  

“If anyone has received a call from someone claiming to be from Protect Your Bubble and something does not feel right, we recommend they hang up the phone and contact us directly or review the advice of our regulator, the FCA at https://www.fca.org.uk/news/warnings/protect-your-bubble-limited-clone.”

The FCA warned that fraudsters are using the details of authorised firms to try to convince people that they work for a genuine, authorised firm.

And it added to beware that “scammers may give out other false details or mix these with some correct details of the registered firm.”

The regulator said: “Almost all firms and individuals carrying out financial services activities in the UK have to be authorised or registered by us. This firm is not authorised or registered by us but has been targeting people in the UK, claiming to be an authorised firm.

“This is what we call a ‘clone firm’; and fraudsters usually use this tactic when contacting people out of the blue, so you should be especially wary if you have been cold called. They may use the name of the genuine firm, the ‘firm reference number’ (FRN) we have given the authorised firm or other details.”