Compliance

There’s no getting away from this fact. We simply have to include the right content and disclosures in a clear and understandable format.

Any failure to do this will let down your clients, yourselves, your business and the profession at large.

Nobody wants trouble with regulations. It’s far better to put in the effort beforehand, than to find out later you made a serious omission or miscommunication.

It’s therefore critical to ensure we include the correct content in the right format within any client communication.

The essential resource for helping with this is the FCA’s own publications; Do not solely rely on 3rd party compliance summaries.

It’s also well worth reading about FOS complaints as this will provide a useful insight into how not to do things. You can learn valuable lessons from other people’s mistakes; you don’t need to go through the pain of making your own.

However, it is important to remember that too many reports are written with a compliance officer or regulator in mind, entirely forgetting that it’s a very human client who is the focus.

It’s time to drop the compliance mentality that has crept into our profession. By going above and beyond the compliance led approach, we can actually be more compliant with regulations.