Browse all articles across people aspects of regulation and people development within UK financial services
It gives me no pleasure to write about regulatory fines – it really doesn’t! As a columnist, such sanctions are ‘low hanging fruit’ as far as article ideas go, but that is not the point.
So, the CII July 2020 remote exams have come and gone with many experiencing technical issues from the offset. What sort of problems did participants experience, and should you let this affect your future exam decisions?
We have seen two regulatory publications over the pandemic one from the FCA and the other from the pension strategy team of the DWP. The FCA have produced CP20/09- “Driving value for Money in Pensions” and the DWP the less snappy “Improving outcomes for members of contribution pension schemes”.
At the time of writing, the UK appeared to be teetering on the brink of following Spain and France back towards a world of work that looks anything but normal. It could be some time yet before we find out exactly what the much anticipated ‘new normal’ looks like.
I thought I would follow up my column in the last edition, ‘Business as usual [‘BAU’] – even in a crisis’ with what I consider a natural follow-on, ‘Emerging risks – especially in a crisis’.
In 2019 the FCA embarked on engagement work entitled 5 Conduct Question Programme, an exercise to establish, across wholesale banks, how effective firms had been at embedding the desired changes among staff.
Getting the best from people working from home has lately become a core skill for many UK managers. Given how suddenly Covid-19 accelerated a pre-existing trend towards remote working, many have been learning through experience. Some lessons have been learned the hard way.
On 5 June 2020 the FCA issued new rules and guidance on a variety of subjects directly related to defined benefit pension transfers advice and guidance and these will be effective from 1 October 2020.
Here, now 3 months into the COVID outbreak in the UK what are the issue for our Asset Management and Wholesale firms – goodness where to start?
For many firms, current working methods, processes and procedures are far from ‘business as usual’. Most financial service firms have had to adapt to a new world of remote working and social distancing; nothing is the same.
According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, by 2017 more than five million of us were spending some or all of our time working from home. That figure seems certain to have increased since then. But now in 2020 – at least temporarily – COVID-19 must have pushed those numbers massively higher.
Of course, the phrase is normally Brave New World, however, as I write events seem to be moving hour by hour. We all have to believe that on the other side of COVID 19 the economic wheels of industry will return to normal, but I can’ help but think many things will be changed.
