Explaining its decision on Tuesday, the regulator said that Flowers’ conduct between 15 April 2010 and 5 June 2013 “demonstrated a lack of fitness and propriety required to work in financial services”.
Flowers, who earned the nickname “the Crystal Methodist” after the former minister was convicted for illegal drug possession, was chairman of the Co-op’s retail banking arm during its near collapse in 2013.
While he was chair of the bank, the FCA found that Flowers made “a number of inappropriate phone calls to a premium rate chat line” and used his work email to “send and receive sexually explicit and otherwise inappropriate messages, and to discuss illegal drugs”, both of which are in breach of the Co-op Bank’s and its parent company’s policies.
Shortly after resigning from his post in 2013, he was arrested for possession of illegal drugs and stripped of his title as reverend in the Methodist church.
In 2014, he plead guilty to possession of cocaine, crystal meth and ketamine and was slapped with a £525 fine.
The FCA added it believes Flowers’ disregard for the standards he is expected to meet demonstrates “a lack of integrity” and said any future involvement Flowers has in the financial services industry “risks undermining consumer and market confidence”.
Commenting on the decision, Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said: “The role of chair occupies a unique place of trust and influence. The chair is pivotal in setting expectations of a company’s culture, values and behaviours.
“Mr Flowers failed in his duty to lead by example and to meet the high standards of integrity and probity demanded by the role. These high standards are what the financial services industry and the wider community rightly expect of its senior individuals. Where a chair, or other senior individual, fails to discharge these standards the FCA will hold them to account.”
The FCA thanked the Prudential Regulatory Authority for its support during the Flowers investigation.
