Financial services risk and regulation

Financial services businesses have growing levels of regulation and new risk exposures. As a result, it’s getting harder for firms to understand and meet compliance standards and manage risk.

Our experienced team of financial services risk and regulatory advisers can help you identify and manage existing and emerging risks. We’ll then help you effectively manage your risk profile and minimise your chances of regulatory scrutiny.

Specialist advice for specialist organisations

We’ve worked with a broad range of clients across the industry, so we understand the regulatory and compliance pressures financial services firms face. Our typical clients include:

• banks;
• payment services firms;
• electronic money providers;
• wealth and asset managers;
• consumer credit firms;
• corporate finance houses;
• family offices;
• insurance providers; and
• fintechs.

Financial services firms often grow quickly. It’s vital that your risk controls evolve as your business grows, allowing you to achieve your commercial aims and stay on the right side of the regulators. We’ll tailor advice and guidance to your unique business needs and help you put the right solutions in place.

We have many areas of expertise. Our team can help with governance, the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR) and broader risk management, particularly around client money and assets (CASS). We can also help with assessing and implementing risk and compliance systems and controls, safeguarding assurance reviews, and meeting your consumer duties. In addition, we can look at specific risks, such as prudential risk, conduct risk and financial crime.

Our team has experts in all areas of financial services regulation. We can help you navigate the various sourcebooks contained within the FCA and PRA handbooks. We’re also well-versed in helping you understand core UK regulation, such as the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Regulations, the Electronic Money Regulations, and the Payment Services Regulations.

International businesses also have to contend with cross-border regulatory requirements, which we can help you comply with. These include GDPR, the Payment Services Directives, Fifth and Sixth Money-Laundering Directives (5 & 6MLD) and Markets in Financial Instruments (MiFID and MiFID 2).

As a recognised former member of the FCA/PRA Skilled Person panel, we regularly conduct Section 166 reviews.

We build bespoke, partnerships with our clients and deliver assurance reviews to work out if they’re operating in a compliant way.

Other types of services we offer include:

• regulatory due diligence;
• target operating model design;
• strategy formulation;
• gap analyses and improvement programmes across the three lines of defence;
• benchmarking;
• regulatory advice and guidance;
• regulator interaction and communications;
• regulatory staff training;
• gone aways;
• development of third-party oversight frameworks;
• framework, policy and procedure design and uplift;
• project and programme management;
• remediation support; and
• change transformation and implementation.

We’ve developed a tried and tested methodology and our reviews give our clients confidence that they’re operating in a compliant and efficient way.

If you’d like to find out more about our financial services risk and regulation team, please contact Paul Jennings or Catherine Brittain.