Training for financial institutions

Refresher training to help your Board understand their individual accountability under SMCR, the regulatory expectations and how to practically ensure and evidence compliance with the conduct rules. Using our practical experience of regulatory investigations and conduct issues to bring this to life with case studies.

Stung by repeated criticism of supervisory weakness, the FCA’s new stance is to press its powers to the limit. As well as taking a strict interpretation of rulebook provisions, this entails aggressively challenging firms suspected of deviating from the spirit or letter of regulation. We cover the impact of this new policy, illustrating with examples from our current casework showing how to spot the red flags and avoid the pitfalls.

Both regulators see effective governance as a fundamental regulatory objective. But the goalposts are constantly shifting and the regulators’ messages often mixed. The regulators’ expectations have expanded beyond orderly decision making and sound risk management to include culture, diversity and more. We look at this from a practical perspective, cutting through the verbiage to identify the key requirements, and what a board should address.

What does culture mean, what are the regulatory expectations and how you set and embed a healthy culture within your business.

The FCA will hold the Board and senior management responsible if a firm fails to deliver good customer outcomes under its new Consumer Duty. We offer tailored training to Boards (and Consumer Duty ‘champions’) highlighting practical steps to be taken now and in the future to ensure compliance with the new Duty.

The developing regulatory framework and heightened market expectations around “greenwashing” has led to a marked increase in the risk of sustainability-related litigation. This training session explores such litigation risks, linking, for example, TCFD reporting and associated policies and procedures with the potential legal actions, and offering an overview of typical mitigating actions.