The FSA has banned Paul Cable, director of Media and Entertainment Insurance Services, from acting as an FSA approved person for at least two years for attempting to overcharge a client by £89,000.

The regulator has also cancelled Media and Entertainment Insurance Services’s permission to undertake any regulated activities.

Media and Entertainment Insurance Services was a small insurance broker which specialised in arranging insurance for the entertainment industry, including advertising and television commercials. Cable founded Media and Entertainment Insurance Services in 1999 and was the firm’s only FSA approved person.

In January 2007 Cable, on behalf of Media and Entertainment Insurance Services Limited, was asked to arrange two insurance contracts for a client. The contracts were for an area of business that was outside Cable’s usual area of expertise. Cable significantly inflated the cost of the insurance premiums and falsified two documents in a deliberate attempt to overcharge the client. The client only learnt of the true cost of the premiums after making their own enquiries.

The FSA said it accepts that this was an isolated incident and that Cable made a “full and frank admission”” of his misconduct.