Browse all articles across people aspects of regulation and people development within UK financial services
One should not be surprised to see an enormous amount of column inches taken up by headline grabbing statements when the Financial Conduct Authority [FCA] issues a record fine. The record fine of £28,038,844 dished out to Lloyds Banking Group firms for serious sales incentive failings was no exception.
It is probably fair to assume that some readers will not know much about AIFMD (Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive) other than it doesn’t trip off the tongue like MiFID or UCITS.
There is a widespread perception today that there is – or certainly has been – something profoundly wrong with the culture of the UK financial services sector.
There’s been a lot of discussion about the March 2014 budget and what it actually means to clients with savings. This article puts the pension changes into easy to understand numbers. I’m assuming that the investment returns from all sources are the same and with the same charges.
By the time this edition of T-CNews hit desks, the long awaited final MMR [Mortgage Market Review] implementation date, 26 April 2014, will almost be upon us. Hopefully, most firms are on top of, and up to date, with their implementation planning.
Providing training and competence services to firms in the insurance sector for many years has given my firm’s trainers and consultants ample opportunity to appreciate the challenges involved in running a successful insurance business in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries.
August is normally a quiet month with not much going on, and journalists scratching round for news to report in the financial press. This August however there was an interesting announcement which has stopped a few in their tracks, and should be making them consider their own position.
If you’re looking to build a professional career, the results you achieve in professional examinations really matter. And when it comes to exams, there’s no substitute for effective revision and sound exam technique. Fortunately these are eminently trainable skills.
Robo-advice/robo-advisers appear to be the buzz words of the year in financial services. For those who are new to these terms, what is robo-advice/adviser? Put simply it’s ‘what it says on the tin’; a system that provides automated, algorithm-based advice without the use of human financial planners/advisers.
Put simply, a competency framework is a structure designed to codify the skills and knowledge (collectively known as competencies) employees need to perform effectively in their assigned roles within a business. If that sounds at all arcane or technical, it shouldn’t. A competency framework is something all business can and should consider putting in place.
Although the ‘three lines of defence’ method of compliance management has been around for a number of years it seems to have become more widely discussed on social media lately, particularly LinkedIn. I do not know why there has been the sudden interest/support for the concept, maybe its simplicity.
2018 will be another summer of sport with The Commonwealth Games in Australia, Ryder Cup in France and of course the football World Cup in Russia. Those of us in Financial Services might be ready for some R&R by then, as MiFID II and the Senior Manager Regime extension to all FS firms (c. 60,000)
