Thank you for taking the time to visit my website, I hope that you find it helpful.
Having worked in compliance and financial crime prevention roles since 2001, I have seen many changes in this space and none more so than in financial crime prevention, data protection and the fight to protect and empower the consumer.
There is no doubt about it, the face of compliance is continually evolving, and the regulatory and legislative frameworks are nimble enough to change too, enabling a more flexible, joined up approach to supervision and enforcement.
From billion-dollar settlements for breaches of sanctions orders, and fines for the mismanagement of vulnerable customers, to GDPR and a world where doing the right thing by the customer is no longer about kind words and warm sentiments, perhaps compliance has never been so meaningful and the role of the regulator so powerful.
As the Director of MSA T&C, I provide training and consulting services in financial crime prevention and general compliance across both the public and private sectors throughout the UK and aboard.
The topics I cover range from AML /CTF/ Financial Crime (inc. Fraud & Bribery) and Data Protection to Complaint Handling, Treating Customers Fairly, Vulnerable Customer Management, Outcome Testing and many more, and I regularly undertake assignments on behalf of financial and non-financial sector firms, both in and outside of the regulated environment.
With a unique perspective of both practitioner and consultant, I also provide senior management/board briefings as well as delivering keynote speeches at domestic and international conferences.
Why don’t you get in touch to see how I could help you and your organisation along your road to compliance?
According to Gov.UK, fraud is the most common offence committed in the UK, amounting to 41% of all crime reported in the year ending September 2022 (Factsheet: failure to prevent fraud offence - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). There is little doubt that instances of fraud have increased during and subsequent to the pandemic, and consequently, there has been a long-standing call for more to be done to address and prevent fraud.
In an announcement made on 28th March 2023 in the European Parliament News, ( New EU measures against money laundering and terrorist financing | News | European Parliament (europa.eu)), it was announced that on the 21st March 2023, MEP’s from the Economic and Monetary Affairs and Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs committees, agreed to adopt their position on pieces of draft legislation of the EU’s Anti Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Policy.
In March 2019, the FCA published “The Directory”. Following on from the Senior Manager’s regime, there is a reduced number of people within a firm that are required to be approved by the FCA and PRA, and therefore a reduced number of individuals names will appear on the Financial Services register.
Consequently, those carrying out customer function type roles such as those who provide financial advice, help with pension transfers, traders, portfolio managers and additional directors will no longer be approved by the FCA and PRA and will not appear on the register.
In February 2019, we saw the UK’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) (not to be confused with the Canadian regulator the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) impose a £5000 fine against London based Raphaels Bank, the first fine levied by the agency since its creation in 2016.
In February 2019, the FATF issued a list of those jurisdictions that have strategic AML/CFT deficiencies and therefore present a risk to the financial system until commitments to address the deficiencies materialise.
The listed countries are:
January 2019 saw the UK’s Transparency International (TI), Corruption Perception Index (CPI) score fall from 8th place to 11th this being the UK’s lowest score since it hosted the global Anti-Corruption Summit in 2016. This fall in ratings does need to be balanced however against the fact that globally 65 countries ratings fell and one of the biggest falls was the USA who fell from 16th in 2017 to its current 22nd place.
In this assessment, adopted at the October 2018 Plenary meeting in Paris and published in December 2018, the UK was classified as having an effective regime in many respects.
However, we were also reminded that the UK is the largest financial services provider in the world and therefore we hold a significant risk that some of the funds that we handle may have links to criminal activity and/or terrorism.
Waves of regulatory change have been engulfing the financial services sector since the 2008 crisis. With businesses struggling to stay afloat in this sea of regulation, it’s no surprise that ‘regtech’ is the latest buzzword on the financial services block.
