Over the last few years, FCA-authorised firms have faced new rules and requirements, heightening regulatory activity, an evolving landscape post-Bexit, and so much more.
All of which begs the questio,: How is a firm meant to keep up?
Short ansswer: The right resrouces.
As a trusted compliance partner for thousands of global firms, we at COMPLY make it our priority to arm compliance professionals with the technology, tools, services, and resources to ensure they can continue to naviagte regulatory challenges with dexterity.
Today, we’re focused on the resources, giving you some of our most popular guides specifically for FCA-authorised firms. Let’s dive in.
Top Blogs and Guide for FCA-Authorised Firms
COMPLY’s 2025 Compliance Predictions: UK Edition
As we come to the end of the FCA’s 2022-2025 Business Plan, which has brought significant results and improvements for the UK financial services market, we expect the launch of a new and evolved strategy. In a recent speech by Emily Shepperd, FCA chief operating officer, the FCA highlighted several key themes, including:
- Becoming a more efficient and effective regulator
- Tackling financial crime Building consumer resilience
- Supporting economic growth and innovation
The predictions we have included within this guide emphasise these areas of FCA focus, highlighting their continued commitment to maintaining a balance of progress and protection.
Bracing for Regulatory Impact: Insights into the Evolving UK Compliance Landscape
The last year has been fraught with regulatory change. And as we prepare for what is surely to be ongoing regulatory scrutiny and increasing pressures, firms will need to arm their programmes with best practices and strategic resources to enable comprehensive compliance management.
Firms should take warnings, insights, and notifications from the FCA as indicators of the expected regulatory standard, using these resources to guide their compliance framework, evolving processes and incorporating new requirements to ensure their firm’s ongoing compliance into 2025 and beyond.
An Interview with Jessica Freckleton: What Proactive Steps Can Firms Take To Anticipate And Prepare For Upcoming Regulations?
Firms should ensure they track regulatory changes by subscribing to alerts and news sources from the FCA and other regulatory bodies. The FCA website publishes consultation papers when further regulation is considered, in addition to all finalised guidance and policy statements. I also typically recommend that my clients take advantage of their network and resources, for example:
- Industry events
- Webinars
- Roundtable discussions
COMPLY Stats: Only 28% of Compliance Teams Have Implemented a Comprehensive Program Evaluation Process
How do you measure success?
As a compliance professional, it’s likely you spend your days mitigating risks, maintaining compliance requirements, and setting the culture of compliance for your firm. But how do you (and your board or executive team) know what’s working, what isn’t, and how you stack up compared to your compliance colleagues?
During our recent webinar, Unlocking Compliance Success, COMPLY’s Chief Product Officer David Bliss led a dynamic discussion around benchmarks of success for compliance programs and what teams can do to better showcase these metrics of merit.
To begin their discussion, David polled the audience, asking the key question: How mature is your compliance performance benchmarking today?
And the result? Only 28% of respondents stated they had a comprehensive evaluation assessment process. While 12% stated they had processes in place to assess specific projects.
2024-2025 UK CCO Playbook
The past year has been littered with headlines and media coverage on new technologies, shifting global economies, and evolving regulatory priorities, all of which have created ongoing ripple effects for financial firms worldwide.
And compliance professionals? Have found themselves at the forefront, directly impacted by both increasing risks and heightening regulatory standards.
COMPLY’s 2024 UK CCO Playbook, featuring insights from COMPLY Chief Product Officer, David Bliss and Director of Compliance Advisory, Jessica Freckleton, analyses the scope of various internal and external challenges and the impact on compliance programs. Through best practices and tactical insights, we aim to help leaders better engage with the evolving market and establish the kind of programme that can withstand whatever new headline comes next.
FCA Cracks Down on Crypto Firms: A Focus on Regulatory Compliance
On Aug. 7, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) shared the findings of its review of several crypto firms to assess their adherence to new financial promotion rules. These regulations, introduced in October 2023, aim to safeguard consumers by providing them with a clearer understanding of the risks associated with crypto investments.
The FCA’s crackdown underscores the critical importance of robust compliance management systems for crypto firms. Effective regulatory compliance not only protects consumers but also safeguards the firm’s reputation and ensures its long-term sustainability. By implementing comprehensive compliance programs, firms can mitigate risks, avoid costly penalties, and foster trust with investors.
While the regulator acknowledges the challenges of adapting to new regulatory landscapes, the findings reveal significant compliance gaps among crypto firms.
Solving for the Challenges of SMCR: An Interview with Jessica Freckleton
For many firms, SMCR requirements continue to be a source of stress and strain. However, as FCA fines rack up, compliance teams can’t afford to leave any SMCR questions unanswered.
To help you navigate the challenges of SMCR, we sat down with COMPLY’s UK Director, Compliance Advisory, Jessica Freckleton, to get her keen insights on how firms are facing SMCR requirements and navigating potential compliance hurdles.
Looking for additional insights into the ins and outs of SMCR? Download our SMCR guide today.
Are there specific aspects of SMCR that you see firms struggle with the most?
The FCA places significant emphasis on written documentation evidencing where key responsibilities lie to ensure transparency and clarity within firms. In large part, this enables them to more effectively facilitate the enforcement actions against individual Senior Managers when breaches do occur.
I see numerous firms struggling to ensure that each Senior Manager has a clear Statement of Responsibilities (SoR) that not only outlines their role and responsibilities, but most importantly, from the outset, deciding who the responsibility lies with for each specific area within the firm. Sometimes senior managers struggle to clearly define each element of their role as they wear so many hats. Between delegation of certain aspects of their role and the often-inevitable role evolution, the SoR gets neglected.
A further challenge is to ensure consistency between the SoR and other documentation surrounding the role of the Senior Manager, such as job descriptions, employment contracts, or partnership agreements.
Creating and Cultivating a Culture of Compliance
To successfully meet regulatory standards, your firm’s compliance responsibility cannot solely rest on the CCO’s shoulders.
While your compliance team will lead initiatives, interpret rulings, and act as the source of truth for rules and regulations, it is critical that every member of your firm take an active role in achieving and maintaining compliance.
Think of it this way, in a team sport you always have a captain, but that captain must rely on their teammate to successfully work together to win games. Compliance is the same.
To help you create and cultivate a culture of compliance at your firm, we’ve aggregated best practices, insights, and helpful tips from thousands of our clients.
Creating a Culture of Compliance
Simply put, a culture of compliance is something that your team must actively work at, establishing guardrails for your firm’s employees, so everyone knows what to do, what not to do, and why.
- Schedule ongoing training programmes that address specific regulations relevant to your firm, the regulatory bodies supervising it, the markets within which you trade, the countries within which you operate, the strategies and products traded, and countries you market. Make training interactive and engaging, using case studies and real-world scenarios. Training sessions can include a variety of face-to-face sessions, online modules, and off-site sessions. Be conscious that some training sessions will not apply to all employees.
- Establish clear and accessible communication channels for employees to ask questions and report concerns related to compliance.
- Maintain open communication with all employees, highlighting how compliance supports firm growth and what can occur due to non-compliance.
- Encourage knowledge sharing within the organisation. Organise team meetings, lunches, or internal presentations where employees can learn from each other’s compliance expertise.
The 2025 Compliance Buyer’s Guide
Raise your hand if you are managing your firm and employee compliance program using a legacy system or a home-grown solution. Keep your hand raised if that same solution increases your operational costs, bogs down your resources, limits your flexibility, creates information silos, and lacks reporting and audit trails you can actually trust.
Or maybe you’re using a handful of industry point solutions that you’ve cobbled together to manage both the complexities of firm and employee compliance — but the amount of manual labor needed to visualize and report on compliance has become an impossible and time-consuming task.
The result? When you use static, piecedtogether solutions, you’re forced into rigid processes that impact productivity and lack the ability to turn data points into insights. You don’t know what you don’t know — and hat’s not the sort of risk you want to take. Not with billions of dollars fined to organizations just like yours every year.
This is a scenario we know all too well in the compliance industry.
The fact of the matter is, if you’re a CCO or a member of a compliance team, you’re feeling the pressure to reimagine how you handle enterprise-wide compliance and you need a vendor with the capabilities and the chops to advise you on where to go from here. And where you should be headed in the near and long-term.
Big questions are bubbling up. Do you continue down the path of investing in your home-grown solution or working with the various vendors you use to try and build a holistic view of your compliance program? Or do you build the case for a new compliance solution?
“Is it possible to have it all?” you wonder. One view, one platform, one vendor — with open architecture and modules configurable to your unique environment, business practices, and firm risk profile? And can that same vendor serve as an extension of your team by offering consulting, strategic services, and managed services?
The answer is yes.
Meeting Compliance Objectives in 2025
2025 is set to be a year of change and evolution within the compliance space. And not just for FCA-authorised firms. On a global scale, the regulatory landscape is facing stark upheaval.
But throughout it all, COMPLY is here. As a partner. A resource. And a trusted expert.
Discover how our configurable solutions have helped thousands of firms navigate regulatory change with ease. Let’s talk.