SMCR 

Release of v2 of SMCR to bring further configurability – refer to the spotlight on SMCR for more details. 

Compliance Advice 

Enhanced Export from CAR Register 

• Amendments to the tags and topics section, allowing custom fields to be linked to a particular topic 
• When a user selects a topic for a compliance advice request they are then presented with additional custom questions to ensure the compliance team get the right information 

FileChecker 

We have added hyperlinks to tasks to make it easier for users to complete follow up tasks when looking at the completed file. 

From the completed file, all tasks can now be viewed/completed by clicking on the link as demonstrated below: 

Details regarding autofailed reviews have now been added to: 

• The report – When clicking Show Report, details of autofailed questions are now shown. 

• The Review Page – when a file has been sent for QA, allowing a QA reviewer to easily see where a file has autofailed. 

• In the result column on the FileCheck Register 

Document Manager 

Adding Files / Documents 

• When using folder structures, a document will now be added into the folder you select. 

• For bulk upload, users can select the appropriate folder for upload. 

• Moving Files / Documents 

• Files can now be moved into sub-folders where required. 

PA Dealing Register 

• Small amends to the confirmation reports to include the time stamp within reports / exports 

• Display PDF reports to managers within the system 

The post System Updates appeared first on My Compliance Centre.

Autumn 2023 Newsletter.

So, what has been going on with our regulators over the last quarter? 

Output Levels 

In summary, we can say that regulators are about as busy as they usual.  One simple metric that we often apply is simply to consider their output level of regulatory updates and other documents.  Over the last 12 months, there has been a remarkable consistency in terms of the productivity of the primary regulators that we track. By way of reminder, the FCA in particular dramatically increased its output in Q4 of last year and has now remained constant at around 100 to 110 documents per quarter. Similarly, the primary European regulators, the PRA, and the ICO are all very consistent in their levels of output.  

Enforcement  

If we look at fines imposed by the FCA, so far this is a quiet year relative to 2022. As of the 2^nd of October, only seven fines had been imposed by the FCA, compared to 22 fines during all of 2022. Why the slowdown?  There could be many reasons, but it seems reasonable to expect an increase in 2024 and beyond in relation to non-compliance with the Consumer Duty.   

How are they Regulating? 

In terms of how the FCA is regulating, then the trend that we’ve noted previously, of a move away from consultation and towards guidance, continues (in other words, they’re telling us rather than asking us).  During the last quarter, there were only four FCA consultations, most of which were of no relevance to the vast majority of the financial services industry. However, by contrast, there were 18 difference issuances of guidance by the FCA. 

What are the primary trends and topics of note that have happened in the last quarter? 

A number of different issues have caught my eye recently. Firstly, the recent simultaneous consultations by both the PRA and the FCA on Diversity and Inclusion is of significance for everybody.  The FCA is recommending extending the scope of conduct rules to include all forms of harassment and bullying, amending FIT assessments under SMCR and including these aspects as contributory factors when considering the Suitability Threshold Condition.   

Moving on, what appears on the outside to be a very mundane Consultation by the FCA on its “Rule Review Framework” caught my eye because a key factor within this initiative, again, is data.  The FCA has always referenced being a data-driven regulator, but as we’ve noted elsewhere, its new Leeds office apparently gives it a greater capability to use data in all aspects of its operations, and this appears to be another example. 

The ongoing involvement of politicians and politics in financial services regulation continues unabated.  The hot water that RBS got themselves into over the closure of Nigel Farage’s bank account by Coots was front page news.  Additionally, politicians have been very happy to wade in on the topic of Consumer Duty, regarding issues such as banks failing to increase their interest rates paid to depositors at the same rates as those charged to customers.  The repeal of European law is an ongoing process, with several major initiatives being driven through by HMT, and the Edinburgh reforms are still ongoing.  Personally, I find too much political involvement in regulation distasteful and unhelpful, but it is reality, and right now there is a lot. 

Having summarised the above, two primary issues I’ve really caught my eye over recent months. 

The first is what I think will become a proper bun fight around the issue of the regulation of crypto firms’ financial promotions. The UK already has extraterritorial aspects to its regulation (although these are not as aggressive as the US.)  However, the proposals for the regulation of financial promotions made by unregulated crypto firms appears to go much further than we’ve previously seen in terms of extraterritorial regulation.  This is because the new crypto regulations are being imposed on the global crypto industry regarding any marketing carried out towards UK consumers, but the global crypto industry is not geared up to comply.  The FCA’s position has become increasingly action-oriented through the year, most recently, issuing a final warning to crypto firms, quite clearly believing that the vast majority are simply ignoring it and are going to carry on marketing to UK consumers as before. Where this all leads will be very interesting to see.  If non-UK based crypto firms are fined or sanctioned in any other way by the FCA, will they care? 

The other issue that has caught my eye through the year is the approach of different regulators towards the regulation of AI. Most obviously, what do the FCA and the ICO think respectively?  And what does it mean for us all? 

Let’s take the ICO first.  

The ICO broadly thinks that the current governance (i.e. number of regulators) is absolutely fine.  They don’t want any more regulators just for AI – as far as they’re concerned, they are involved in numerous AI regulatory forums already and the current legislation and rules work.   

For me, that was very interesting: in short, they are saying that if current regulators do their job properly, as UK consumers we can expect to be protected from the dangers of AI going forward. I wonder how many UK residents and consumers believe this to be the case?   

To summarise, in its regulation of AI, what does the ICO care about?  It cares about: 

• The application of existing data protection principles by AI providers 
• Identifying and managing future risks 

• Bias and discrimination in decision making and the explainability of decisions made (i.e. why your mortgage was turned down by AI) 
• Specifically, accountability and transparency (both in regard to automated decision making and how personal data is used) 

What is the FCA’s view of its role regarding the regulation of AI? 

Overall, the FCA offers a predictably cautious welcome to the potential benefits of AI for consumers, while expressing concern about the risks posed.  Like the ICO, it also cares about the explainability of AI decision making.  Also, like the ICO the FCA also believes that the existing principles embedded within the legislation which underpins its regulations are fit for purpose in an AI driven world as much as they were pre-AI. 

Very understandably, the FCA believes that agency lies with firms regarding the performance and actions of any AI system.  Put another way, firms can’t simply blame the AI for what happens; they are responsible. 

The FCA is also quite rightly concerned that cyber prevention continues to improve at the rate of AI driven cyber fraud and cyber-attacks.   

However, what really interested me from the FCA’s observations on AI is about the impact of social media misinformation on price formation in global securities markets. It is very easy to understand how fake news and deliberate misinformation can impact markets, but the extent to which this is happening I was really surprised by.  The FCA reports that intraday volatility has doubled compared to during the 2008 financial crisis, blaming social media, and AI driven automated trading for this. 

Oh, I nearly forgot.   

Consumer Duty happened this quarter as well. 

For any further enquiries, please contact Ben Mason at ben.mason@mycompliancecentre.com

The post Regulator Watch appeared first on My Compliance Centre.

The analysis below is in two parts.  Firstly, we present a short macro analysis.  While that is interesting and tells a story it is difficult for any individual to draw too many conclusions. 

So, we progressed our analysis to consider specific risk areas, such as which financial services sectors and which activities are most at risk.  Thereby, we hope to help compliance teams to establish where their priorities might lie in building their compliance frameworks. 

And an early spoiler alert:  if you had asked me ‘Ben, what is the most common reason for an FCA fine?’ I would have said ‘AML’.  I could not have been more wrong!  It is the highest average fine, but only the 7^th most common reason! 

A Note on Our Methodology 

We use the term ‘sectors’ to indicate what might also be ‘verticals’ within the financial services industry.  e.g. banking and asset management are ‘sectors’. 

To support the analysis, we listed all the fines and categorised them across 18 different risk areas and 11 different sectors.   

However, there is, space for much subjectivity here.  e.g. are JP Morgan a bank?  Or an Asset Manager? Or Capital Markets firm?  Are Tesco Bank a Bank or Personal Finance firm?  Is a Building Society ‘banking’ for the sake of our analysis?   And, in terms of categories of fine, where does the line fall between general TCF failings, mis-selling and suitability of advice?  And so on. 

However, we have made a call on all these issues and the analysis below reflects our subjective view.  

Macro Analysis of FCA’s Regulatory Fines 2013-2022 

The largest FCA (or FSA) fine ever is the £284m to Barclays for market conduct failings in their FX trading business.  Conversely, Mr Zaffar Tanweer’s £1,100 fine is the lowest. 

The largest fine received by an individual was Stuart Ford who was fined a mind-blowing £76m in relation to the Keydata scandal. Fortunately, of the other 141 fines levied against individuals, only four additional fines were greater than £1m. 

Risk Analysis 

There are two angles we will look at to help with this: industry sector and the category of fine. 

Firstly, we identified 11 distinct industry sectors that had attracted FCA fines.  Which industries are the highest risk?   

To really evaluate that, I think you have to factor in the number of transactions carried out, the number of firms in the sector and the amount of business conducted generally.  Simply to say ‘standards in banking are clearly lower’ does not reflect the sheer scale of banking operations, the average size of firm in banking, the scope of activities within banks and so on, compared with – say – Asset Management or Wealth Management.   

However, this is it, and banking wins the prize for the highest aggregate fines (although, not the most fines – not surprising as there are only 200 odd of them in a pool of 50,000 regulated firms): 

Viewed graphically, it is really easy to see that banking dominates if assessing the value raised through fines, with no other industry even registering on the scale. 

However, when we look at the same graphic, but this time plotting the number of fines, we can see that a number of sectors feature in the analysis.  Combining these two graphs just highlights how much higher the average fine is within the banking sector then any other sector. 

Each sector has their own story to tell; different risks and challenges.  Here is an analysis of the most frequent reason for a fine, by sector. 

(No data of significant relevance for other sectors.) 

Previously, as a compliance consultant working with firms across the industry and looking from the outside in, I used to routinely think about what sector was the highest reward for the risk taken.  Unsurprisingly, I normally concluded Asset Management, particularly for a non-retail business, and these numbers validate that. 

Let’s now consider which categories of fine occur most often:  

Note:  some of the Market Abuse fines are not regulated entities, but listed firms and sometimes a single offence catches a number of individuals as well as a firm.  Even so, the frequency of Market Abuse is clear to see, followed by mis-selling and customer mistreatment in various forms and different versions of financial crime. 

I did a double-take when I saw the how low the average fine for fraud is (to be clear, that is £k not £m).  However, there is a reason.  Mortgage and insurance fraud is committed – generally – by very small IFAs and brokers, and on a very small scale, relatively speaking, and the fines are commensurately small.  

Trends Over Time 

That leads us on to consider what has changed in ten years?   

Firstly, let’s look at the general trend of fines over time.  In short, the frequency has dropped, but with a pick-up in 2022.   

Why might that be?  There could be numerous factors affecting the two trends seen here (downwards then upwards), so please let me speculate for a minute.   

Firstly, I believe compliance controls in some areas have improved dramatically in response to FCA pressure.  Retail investment advice (on the back of the RDR) and financial crime controls come straight to mind, as well as the entire market sorting out their transaction reporting and client money controls, which so many firms got wrong over an extended period of time. 

However, I also think there are some influential macro factors.  The traditional political-regulation cycle of ‘let’s have easier regulation’ back to ‘oh no, our regulations are too lax; let’s quickly tighten up’ is clearly in evidence.   

Dame Gloster’s report into the LCF scandal was released in December 2020.  This was a major, major event for the FCA.  Even before it came out the temperature at the regulator had changed: they knew what was coming and had tightened their risk appetite.  Nikhil Rathi was appointed CEO of the FCA in October 2020 to deliver a new and more aggressive supervisory culture at the FCA.  The aggression of the FCA’s narrative stepped up immediately and supervisory and enforcement activity with it.  There is a delay between more aggressive supervision turning into more fines, which explains the uplift in fines in 2022 rather than 2021.   

Superimposing FCA CEOs onto the graph above is interesting: 

Is it as simple as Andrew Bailey is a more moderate character and he was CEO during a less aggressive period in the cycle?  It is probably not quite that simple, but it is interesting to see.  I also remember Martin Wheatley being ‘full on’, which the numbers reflect, and Nikhil Rathi clearly also has that brief.  (Based on what he says in his speeches, FCA activity, aggressive ‘anti-firm’ metrics etc.)  

A final comment on the evolution of fines is to examine how the different categories of fine have evolved.  The graph below takes the top 7 recurring categories, representing 81% of fines, and plots them over time.    

(Note:  there are only 5 lines because, we have combined TCF/advice/mis-selling into one to make this graph more readable.) 

Let’s quickly interpret: 

• Market Conduct was a massive issue, it had improved generally and might be making a comeback 
• TCF/Mis-selling/Advice is never going away – ref. Consumer Duty 
• Client Money had its day as a set of regulations no one had implemented correctly, but is generally under control now 
• SMCR did NOT lead to a spike in fines for Senior Managers.  It has been a matter for debate as to whether this means SMCR is working or not? 
• And, for me at least, it is surprising how low AML fines are, although, as we saw above, when they happen, these fines can be huge.  I believe this reflects the relative maturity of AML programmes and supporting technology 

What does this mean for the financial services industry and for Compliance Officers? 

At industry level, it is interesting to see that it is not as simple as to be able to say ‘only financial crime with supporting laws actually gets punished.’  AML, Fraud, B&C and Market Abuse fall into that category, but the regulator clearly is prepared to take action against other areas of misconduct. 

At an individual firm level, well, let’s be honest, you already knew your key risks and where you might be vulnerable.  However, this analysis might help you focus and highlights the need to be continually horizon scanning for the ways in which these breaches can evolve. 

This analysis does clearly highlight how risks vary dramatically by industry, which is already reflected in most firms’ compliance frameworks.  It also highlights that external factors affect what happens at the regulator – and that affects what happens in your firm.  Political pressure on the regulator impacts the mindset of senior regulators and the culture they drive.  This goes in cycles to an extent.  Managing your Board’s expectation as to where we are in the cycle might help them understand your actions.   

For senior compliance officers new to their role, it highlights how important it is to ensure that previous regimes had proper assurance in place, and the need to take stock before making too many decisions as to how to progress.  If there are gaps in your employer’s assurance framework, which have  been ignored for years, then that needs working through. 

Consolidated FCA Fines

You can download our consolidated fines list with our analysis here.

The post Ten Years of FCA Fines  appeared first on My Compliance Centre.

The data in columns B to F is quoted verbatim from the FCA’s website.

In addition, we have added some filters to make the data more usable. Those filters are in columns G-J.

Please note that these filters apply our assessment of each of the metrics and are not independently verified. You should consider the extent to which they apply to your own business.  However, they may help the data contained in the table be usable and accessible for you.

Once you are using the file, please note that there are two tabs in the spreadsheet, including both the tabular data and a summary.

To access and use the FCA Metrics File, please click here and complete the short form.

You will be e-mailed a link to download the file.

The post FCA Metrics 2023  appeared first on My Compliance Centre.

In this article, Ben Mason considers emerging themes, what the Business Plan means for compliance teams and, most importantly, concludes with some concrete suggestions as to what you should do about it.

What is in the Business Plan and are there any surprises?

For those that routinely review such documents, it will not be a surprise that consumer protection, market integrity and financial crime all feature heavily. ESG features, and surprisingly a lesser amount of focus on Diversity and Inclusion than last year, with the FCA’s internal D&I efforts not being commented on here. Predictably, Appointed Representatives, crypto and BNPL all get an airing – the latter two being issues which generate a lot of noise for the small number of regulated firms they impact. And, personally, I find it very helpful when the FCA quantify increases in their activity, such as the number of scams they have intervened in or the number of financial promotions they have asked firms to withdraw.

From the perspective of readers who are compliance professionals looking to manage regulatory risk, there were two primary points of new or evolving interest that I believe are material for all compliance teams to consider. The first is the increasing focus on being ‘data-led’. The second is the FCA’s new-found ability to recast the threshold conditions. 

Firstly, being data-led. The word ‘data’ was mentioned 28 times in last year’s Business Plan and 46 times this year. If you think that is a slightly crude metric, please consider this: the FCA’s new Leeds office is there to focus on ‘enhancing our digital and data capabilities’. With 200 staff based there, that is a massive upgrade on existing resources. Those staff are there for a reason and I think firms should take this seriously. There are actions that need to be taken to work out what this means for you, and I return to this later. 

Secondly, threshold conditions (TCs). The TCs are ambiguous and the FCA can use them to take the strongest action against regulated firms when it wants to. The Business Plan says the FCA will ‘expand the types of breaches of Threshold Conditions that we take action against.’  I take this to mean that they will broaden how they interpret the TCs, at will. This is putting a marker down that they have identified an opportunity to strengthen their powers of intervention using the TCs. 

Moving on, I should acknowledge there is a lot about the competitiveness of the UK’s wholesale markets.  Firms operating in wholesale markets will already be aware of the significant changes coming their way, as the UK looks to strengthen its position post Brexit. These changes are listed in the Business Plan and are far reaching for some compliance teams.

A final comment is that the FCA’s 8.5% increased annual funding requirement starkly contrasts with the PRA’s 3% decrease. While the reasons are all explained, firms already hit with new regulatory fees, such as the Economic Crime Levy, may have some emotive feelings about that. 

What is the context in which this Business Plan has been produced?

The FCA always has a lot going on. It has recruited 700 new staff, on top of staff turnover. It has experienced significant regional expansion (more people in regional offices across the country). As often happens, some changes in the perimeter will impact the FCA’s supervision and authorisation teams. 

The ongoing political challenge for regulators is the stark contradiction of politicians wanting lighter regulation while also heavily criticising any perceived regulatory failure. Brexit and the Future Regulatory Framework also give a colourful backdrop.

From a regulatory strategy perspective, compliance teams should read the Business Plan in the context of the other swathe of regulatory policy and strategy documents. This includes the FCA’s 3 year Strategy, the Regulatory Initiatives Matrix, the Commitments and Objectives, the Metrics and the Perimeter Report, along with all the normal supervisory activity we are all familiar with: enforcement action, Dear CEO letters, policy updates and so on. Ideally, it should feel that these all align, you can relate them to the risk that you already prioritise and you therefore experience no supervisory surprises.

Confused?  You might be…

Before coming onto the practical implications of the Business Plan there is one final observation I can’t help but mention: reading the Business Plan can be slightly confusing.

Ostensibly, the Business Plan is built around three themes which it calls focuses – ‘Focus 1’, ‘Focus 2’ etc.  However, another section of the Business Plan called ‘Our Focus’ lists 8 completely different ‘focuses’.  Slightly strange.

They then talk about prioritising their work. You might think ‘priorities’ and ‘focuses’ were all closely related. However, this is a completely different list of 4 priorities, separate to the 3 focus areas and 8 focuses. 

And, of course, there is thematic overlap between the 3 focus areas, the 8 focuses and the 4 priorities.

Now we have cleared that up, we get to another slight comprehension challenge. 

The 3 focus areas are all broken down into ‘commitments’ and the FCA has 13 commitments in its strategy all supported by metrics it tracks.  So far, so good.

However, just to keep things simple, when the FCA has ‘additional resources available’ it has 4 additional commitments. Which sounds like a commitment to maybe being committed… if resources allow.

Confused?   Well, maybe just a little.

Finally, what should you do about it?

There are a couple of things compliance officers should do about the Business Plan, and the other regulatory policy documents (as identified  above). 

Firstly, the easy thing. Review them all and make sure that your risk focus matches the FCA’s.  Ensure your deployment of resources is risk based, and your compliance monitoring programme, thematic reviews and other routine compliance assurance activities, match the FCA’s focus and priorities.  Brief your Board and ExCo. Make sure the whole company is aligned in where your regulatory risk lies and how you mitigate it. Your Board will be very relieved to hear you link your activity to the risks the FCA have defined. Assess your resourcing to deliver this and identify shortfalls accordingly.

There is also a much more difficult activity to consider, but potentially with a higher pay off, that compliance and risk teams need to start considering.

Let’s return to the FCA’s data-led strategy and what it means – both generally and for your firm specifically.

Firstly, let’s triangulate 3 different aspects:

1. The FCA is data-led, meaning it is now analysing data more effectively, to enable it to take early interventions against the firms it regulates.
2. In its metrics, the FCA publishes a list of the KPIs linked to its objectives and commitments. It uses these to trigger this interventionist activity.
3. Some of those metrics will be directly informed by the data provided by firms, including yours, via regulatory reporting. 

What I believe this means for compliance teams is that the time has come to map data provided to the FCA (within regulatory reporting) back to the KPIs the FCA tracks.  And from there you can ensure you track and report equivalent KPIs internally, that match the FCA’s own KPIs, specifically in those areas that affect your business. You might also track your distance from the formal target. All of this would make a very informative regulatory risk heat map.

By doing this you can establish how close you are likely to be to breaching a risk threshold and thereby being identified for investigation. You can also identify internal changes to reduce the likelihood of such breaches.

That is a tougher project but will be highly rewarding for those that execute it.

To assist firms with this activity, we have developed a spreadsheet which lists the FCA’s metrics in tabular form and offers a number of filters to help you sort through them. Please click here to access the FCA Metrics Report from My Compliance Centre.

For more information, please contact Ben Mason, Founder, My Compliance Centre at ben.mason@mycompliancecentre.com

The post FCA Business Plan – Practical Actions for Compliance Officers appeared first on My Compliance Centre.

Dear Clients and Partners, 

Welcome to the Summer Edition of our Newsletter for 2023.

One of our biggest highlights over the last six months is the many enhancements we have made to our system. These are always developed in line with our client’s priorities and we are excited to share more information on recent developments. Please see here for more information System & Product Update.

However, the hard work doesn’t stop there for our product development team as we continue delivering against our roadmap. Look out in the next few weeks for key announcements on our new enhanced SMCR module, a new look and feel Admin module and an easy to use and configurable “Register Builder”, amongst numerous other developments.

Our highlighted product focus for this newsletter is our Financial Promotions Module, which helps compliance teams set a workflow for approval of financial promotion material, providing full control over the process of recording, and approving financial promotions. For more information on our enhanced Financial Promotions module, read more here Financial Promotions.

Given the 8.5% increase in the FCA’s Annual Funding Requirement for this financial year, we thought it might be fun to compare it with a few competing regulators. The results are astonishing – click here to see them FCA Budget.

I also recently teamed up with Lucy McClements, as part of the Northrow Wired-In webinar series. Our subject was the FCA Business Plan 2023/24: What Does the Changing Regulatory Approach Mean For Compliance? We looked at some new angles on the FCA’s “strategic framework” and Business Plan. You can watch the webinar here.

Lucy and I used to work closely together when I chaired the Association of Professional Compliance Consultants (APCC) Authorisations Working Group and she was Head of Authorisations at the FCA. It is always a pleasure to team up with her and, as an “ex-regulator” her insights always add an extra dimension.

The discussion took in the FCA’s budget, operating context, and emerging themes. It specifically looked at how the FCA’s increasingly data-led approach will impact regulated firms and what compliance teams should do about it, including a couple of worked examples of how to use the FCA’s metrics within your own reporting. 

The FCA’s metrics are a key part of their operating and supervisory model. However, working with the metrics is difficult. So, we’ve developed a spreadsheet which lists the metrics in tabular form and offers several filters to help you find those relevant to you. Please click here to download the FCA Metrics File here.

I’ve also written a concise critique on the FCA 2023/24 Business Plan and what is new or what you might need to be aware of. If you are a compliance professional and want to know what to do about it, read more here FCA Business Plan and what to do about it.

Our regular features include:

• Regulator Watch 2023H1– Highlights a few key themes that we have picked up on while tracking regulator activity over the last 6 months.
• We’re delighted to welcome our new clients that currently use My Compliance Centre. We’ve received positive feedback and continue using this feedback to further develop and enrich our roadmap and its delivery against our product strategy, see new clients here.
• Our quote of the quarter – ’’We want firms’ Boards and senior management to make good outcomes for consumers central to their firm’s culture, strategy and business objectives.’’ – The FCA supports firms through the transition to implementing the Consumer Duty.
• Our Charity – A heart-warming update on our favourite charity, Maronka, Educaid, in Sierra Leone. 

Wishing you all a wonderful long summer and looking forward to catching up towards the end of the year. We continue to look forward to reshaping the future of compliance. 

Best Regards,

Ben Mason, Founder, My Compliance Centre

E:ben.mason@mycompliancecentre.com

T: +44 (0) 20 8017 8273

​​​​​Follow us on LinkedIn

The post Welcome to our Summer Newsletter 2023 appeared first on My Compliance Centre.

7 March 2023

“We wanted a system, with wide ranging functionality to support our diverse activities and My Compliance Centre has the widest range of functions in the market. It was also important that we could implement different compliance frameworks for each group company, according to their risk profile, while maintaining a helicopter view of the entire group.” 

Bernard Mukwaira, Group Head of Compliance, ADG Corporate

ADG Corporate is a modern financial services group, based out of London with offices internationally and with over 15 years trading history. With interests in market making, brokerage, asset management, venture capital, private equity and offering its own funding platform, ADG is a truly diverse and innovative group, based on innovative technology and entrepreneurialism.

The breadth of ADG’s business model offers a very specific set of challenges to the compliance team.

Bernard Mukwaira, Group Head of Compliance explains, “it is the role of the compliance function to safely facilitate the ongoing development of the group and to support the entrepreneurial spirit that ADG was founded on, but also to recognise that each group company has its own specific regulatory risks and challenges and ensure our compliance framework reflects those. Given the diversity of the group, we need to be highly agile as a compliance team.”

Bernard Mukwaira and Carl Williams were brought into the group in early 2022 to lead the compliance function and develop a compliance framework that would support the group through the next phase of its growth.

“There were several challenges we needed to address”, stated Bernard. “Firstly, we needed a team both with the breadth of skills to support the wider group and the dynamism to support individual business units appropriately for their challenges. We also needed technology support that would allow our team to be efficient, and to use the compliance skills they have rather than spending all day administering spreadsheets when they should have been adding value to the company. We realised that implementing the right compliance management system was a high priority if we were to be effective as a compliance function.”

ADG searched the market and selected My Compliance Centre as their platform, of choice. “We wanted a system, with wide ranging functionality to support our diverse activities and My Compliance Centre has the widest range of functions in the market. It was also important that we could implement different compliance frameworks for each group company, according to their risk profile, while maintaining a helicopter view of the entire group.”

ADG were able to implement My Compliance Centre within 6 weeks.

“The support of the My Compliance Centre team was very helpful to get up and running, but we also took responsibility for building our own skills so we are in control of our own processes and daily activities. We are able to control employee attestations, process PA Dealing requests, we centralise all of the compliance teams task management in one place, manage all exceptions and breaches and generally control our daily processing through one system. It is also important for us that colleagues across the business find the system easy to use on the occasions that they have compliance tasks to carry out.”

“A final thought for us was that My Compliance Centre has a powerful future vision. Compliance and risk are not standing still, but we know that My Compliance Centre will continue to grow with the business.”

The post “We realised that implementing the right compliance management system was a high priority if we were to be effective as a compliance function.”  appeared first on My Compliance Centre.

Dear Clients and Partners, 

Welcome to our first Newsletter for 2023 and here’s wishing you all the very best for a happy and healthy year!

Looking back, 2022 had many highlights for My Compliance Centre. We were delighted to be awarded Best Compliance Management System at the Compliance Register awards in September, a great recognition for the hard work of our team. We were also delighted Sunil Sehdev joined us as CEO at the end of the year. 2023 is a year we are looking forward to with renewed energy and enthusiasm as we look towards the ongoing growth of the company.

Within the newsletter, in ‘Meet Our CEO’ – Sunil Sehdev gives us a glimpse of his key focus areas for this year and what he believes will drive the take up of compliance management software in the future.

In our featured article, ‘They are looking in the wrong place’, Ben Mason, Founder of My Compliance Centre, compares the cost of what he calls ‘the biggest Regulatory scandal since the credit crunch’, with the cost of other high profile market failures, such as the recent collapse of FTX and concludes that it is just possible the authorities are looking in the wrong place in their attempt to fix the market.

The FCA and the ICO, two critical regulators for everyone reading this article, have both recently laid out a vision for the future. Their vision is very different, however, and comparing the two offers a stark reminder of the pressure the FCA is under and is transferring to regulated firms.  Two regulators, two approaches compares the FCA and ICO’s respective approaches.

The FCA, in particular, has had a very busy 2022, in every sense. Our quarterly summary, Regulator Watch, is a high level analysis of what regulators have been up to, enforcement, supervision and their overall activity, juxtaposed with Ben Mason’s opinion and insight on the last quarter’s regulators activities.

Our regular features include:

• Quote of the Quarter – Sir Jon Cunliffe, Bank of England Deputy Governor, articulates just one of many angles as to why crypto currencies should be regulated.
• Our System Update is here with new functionality and module version updates.
• Our featured article – They are looking in the wrong place 

Wishing everyone all the best for the new year.

Ben Mason, Founder, My Compliance Centre

E:ben.mason@mycompliancecentre.com

T: +44 (0) 20 8017 8273

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