Karen Johnston

Advice and support to Executive teams and corporate services on compliance with regulatory requirements, change impact assessments, risk mitigations, complaints management, corporate projects, management of regulatory investigations and enquiries, responses to reviews and consultations.

For nearly ten years Karen worked for a national Regulator, providing strategic risk management advice to its senior decision makers, managing legal risk and in-house teams in a heavily matrixed environment. She was involved in regulatory policy development working closely with central government (DWP, BEIS, Treasury, Cabinet Office) on legislative reform and implementation of new regulatory laws. She formulated business cases and devised and delivered major regulatory change projects, including the national compliance and enforcement strategy for pensions autoenrollment. She was workstream lead for a multi-million-pound public procurement of outsourced enforcement services.

Karen has five years’ experience of decision making at Tribunal level, with sole responsibility for producing decisions which can withstand High Court scrutiny on points of law. As Deputy Pensions Ombudsman she made over 600 fully reasoned decisions resolving complaints of maladministration and disputes of pensions law.

For the last six years she has been a member of the FCA’s Regulatory Decisions Committee, a Board level multi-disciplinary enforcement decision making panel. She is highly skilled in the application of statutory powers, the forensic examination of evidence and principles of procedural fairness.

Karen brings forensic, advocacy and procedural skills formed at the criminal bar, honed by experience as a tribunal advocate and decision maker.

She has prosecuted and defended at all levels of seriousness in the Magistrates and Crown court, including health and safety cases and a successful private prosecution for importation of endangered species under CITEs. She conducted benefit appeal litigation before administrative tribunals and later conducted advocacy before the Consumer Credit and Estate Agents Licensing Tribunals. She decided over 600 cases exercising the statutory tribunal jurisdiction of the Deputy Pensions Ombudsman and currently makes decisions for the FCA about fitness and propriety to conduct authorised financial services business in the UK.

Karen brings contract litigation, consumer protection, regulatory casework experience, alternative dispute resolution and mediation skills together to provide an end-to-end compliance advice and dispute resolution service for small and medium sized businesses.

She was formerly an in-house consumer lawyer for the Office of Fair Trading where she advised on consumer credit compliance, fairness of terms in consumer contracts, distance selling protections, package holiday and timeshare regulation. She formulated cases for injunctive action to restrain consumer detriment in the UK and Europe. She approved and revoked authorisation for industry codes of practice (ABTA, FLA and CAP).

She renegotiated the order of repayment priorities in the standard terms of the UK’s retail banks. She advised and assisted Westminster trading standards to negotiate sale of goods and service compliance with national businesses domiciled in the Borough.

She made final legally binding decisions in over 600 disputes brought to the Pensions Ombudsman service and can assist with the design of remediation and consumer redress programmes flowing from mis selling/governance or regulatory failings.

Karen can offer advice to Trustees, Managers, Administrators, and members on scope of powers, decision making processes, adequacy of evidential enquiries and documentation of reasoning.

She worked as the Pensions Regulator’s chief advisor on strategic legal risk and has a deep understanding of the regulatory environment within which schemes and employers operate.

Her decision-making caseload as Deputy Pensions Ombudsman, routinely included claims for breach of trust, disputed discretionary benefit decisions, claims about misconstruction of rules and statutory provisions, actions for recovery of overpayments, claims for financial loss consequent on maladministration, poor transfer advice, SIPP disputes, and problems associated with pension sharing orders.

She has a working familiarity with the rules of the major public sector schemes and can assist with the resolution of systemic administration problems in DB and DC schemes.

Karen can assist with the design of remediation and consumer redress programmes flowing from mis selling/governance or regulatory failings.