FCA permanently bans debt management senior manager for concealing High Court director disqualification
Howard Roland Duckett hid a ten-year director ban from the FCA while holding two senior management functions. The prohibition is permanent.
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The FCA has permanently banned Howard Roland Duckett from working in financial services for a serious lack of honesty and integrity. Duckett held two senior management functions at debt management firm Beauforce Corporation Limited: SMF3 (Executive Director) and SMF16 (Compliance Oversight).
Action required if: your firm has approved persons or senior managers with any adverse legal history they have not self-reported.
The case rests on two failures. The High Court disqualified Duckett from acting as a company director for ten years on 13 November 2020, with the disqualification taking effect on 4 December 2020, following conduct at an unrelated company. The Court found he had repeatedly lied, relied on fabricated evidence, and invented a fictitious individual to take responsibility for running the business.
The second failure is the one the FCA treated as decisive: Duckett did not disclose the disqualification to the FCA at all.
In November 2025, the FCA had already restricted Beauforce from carrying out any regulated activities, ordered it to stop accepting consumer money, and required it to return money held in its bank accounts. Duckett challenged the FCA's Decision Notice by referring it to the Upper Tribunal; the reference was subsequently struck out.
This is the second dishonesty-related prohibition published in four days, following bans on two former Blue Horizon Asset Management executives for falsifying documents during attempted acquisitions.
The obligation to self-report adverse legal findings, including director disqualifications, is a fitness and propriety matter in its own right. The Duckett case shows the FCA will pursue a permanent ban on that basis alone, separate from the underlying conduct that triggered the original disqualification.
