Managing your relationship with the regulators: The accountability agenda

We live in an era in which regulators and the court of public opinion are often unforgiving of any perceived or actual failings. The implementation of the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR) for FCA firms has brought this home but it is part of a much bigger picture. We have seen an increasing focus on governance issues and think that there are a number of practical lessons to be learnt from the experience of the last few years. This online webinar will seek to examine good and poor practices around how these issues are handled and will involve members of our financial services consultancy and legal teams which cover both non-contentious and contentious scenarios from a regulatory and employment law perspective.

In addition, in light of recent events, we will be applying the various aspects of the individual accountability regime to firms’ attempts to effectively manage the COVID 19 outbreak.

Particular focus areas will be:

• SMCR post implementation agenda – what to think about this year
• Whistleblowing – practical insights from response experience. We will cover areas such as the tensions between regulatory and employment law and when and how to run investigations where issues have been raised.
• Corporate governance – areas to watch for and what we are seeing across the industry. The issues are relevant across the areas of interest to the regulators, including, for example, board and executive structures, transaction reporting and product distribution. The important point is that this is relevant to both wholesale and retail firms
• At the end of each section, we will discuss what firms many need to consider specifically in regards to their on-going management of the COVID 19 outbreak