Under the Spotlight

The FSA will morph into the FCA and with a more vigilant judgement based approach to regulation the regulator will be keen to see significant progress in certain areas.

If your running a client facing business whether its B2B B2C or D2C, now is the time to ensure that you have the controls and management systems in place to ride the wave of regulatory change.

At Engage we have focused on 7 key areas:

1. Strategy: Governance planning and risks: The regulator will need to gain reassurance that you have developed appropriate strategies and programmes to meet regulatory change directives such as the Retail Distribution Review – RDR
2. Products: How your firm has chosen to operate in the new RDR regime in relation to appropriate product offering to customers and use of legacy products. 
3. Charging: How are you approaching charging and facilitation for fees is imperative. Are you relying on the product providers or have you already developed a clear system for direct customer charging? This includes consideration of all consequential changes including technology, systems, controls and documentation
4. Customer value proposition: The regulator will want to ensure your services offer high value and address customers needs at all times. This will include in-depth analysis of how your measuring customer relationships by segmentation.
5. Distribution channels: How will your strategy adapt to the new regime, and can it cope with the appropriateness and suitability tests?
6. Professionalism: Assurance the firm is on track not only with qualifications but also gap fill, SPS and on-going training and competency
7. Business model: Forget if your hankering for independent restricted or even specialist services, is your model aligned to meet your target customers long term needs?