Chairman, Financial Services User Group

Mick McAteer is a consumer advocate with long experience of representing consumers at UK and EU level, and highest level regulatory experience.

He is founder and co-Director of The Financial Inclusion Centre, a UK not-for-profit research group (www.inclusioncentre.org.uk). The Centre’s mission is to promote financial markets that work for society, not the few. He is Chair of the European Commission’s Financial Services User Group (FSUG), member of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) Financial Innovation Working Group, a board member of the CARITAS (Westminster) Advisory Board, a board member of ShareAction (the movement for Responsible Investment), a board member of charity Z2K, and member of the Registry Trust Consumer Panel.

He was a board member of the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)/ Financial Services Authority (FSA) for six years until the end of 2015. He was Chair of the FCA’s External Risk and Strategy Committee, and was on the FCA’s Oversight Committee and Audit Committee.

Previously, Mick was Principal Policy Adviser at Which? (the largest consumer group in Europe, formerly known as Consumers' Association). He was with Which? for 13 years and formulated the organisation’s policy on financial services. Prior to this, he worked for five years for two major fund management firms in London.

He has also held a number of other senior board and committee positions. He was a board member of the Financial Reporting Council’s (FRC) Professional Oversight Board, a non-executive director of The Pensions Advisory Service (TPAS) and one of the original founders of Hackney Credit Union, based in the London Borough of Hackney where he was a board member from 2005 – 2007.

At EU level, he was previously Chairman of the European Commission’s Financial Users Panel (FINUSE) and member of the Consultative Panels of the Committee of European Insurance and Occupational Pension Supervisors (CEIOPS), Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) and Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS).