Mick McAteer is a campaigner for economic and social justice with long experience of representing consumers at UK and EU level with a focus on financial markets and public policy. He is founder and co-Director of The Financial Inclusion Centre, a UK not-for-profit policy and research group. The Centre’s mission is to promote financial markets that work for society. He is also Chair of the anti-poverty charity Z2K, Chair of non-profit Registry Trust Ltd (RTL), and Deputy Chair of the General Consumer Council of Northern Ireland. At EU level, he is on the new European Commission Financial Services User Group (FSUG).

Previously, he was a board member of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)/ Financial Services Authority (FSA) which regulates the UK’s financial markets for six years until the start of 2016. He was Chair of the FCA’s External Risk and Strategy Committee (ERSC) which is responsible for ensuring the risks to the FCA’s statutory objectives are identified and mitigated. He was also on the FCA’s Oversight and Audit Committees.

He 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. He led the work on exposing major scandals such as pensions, mortgage endowment and PPI mis-selling, and work on reform of pensions, insurance and banking industries. Prior to this, he worked for five years for two major fund management firms in London.