2016 is going to be another very busy year for compliance officers and their teams, and that is just taking into account what change and potential change we know about already. We also now know that we are going to have a new person at the helm at the FCA, which will inevitably bring further change as he stamps his own mark on how the FCA is going to go about its important work. Personally, I think a good choice has been made, but only time will tell whether that is the case or not. What we really need now is a period of stability.
Some of you and your firms will be breathing a sigh of relief as you submit your grandfathering packs ready for moving into the new Individual Accountability Regime, and others will just be contemplating what it means for your firm. I work for a relatively small firm, but preparation and then turning this into business as usual has been a considerable amount of work. 2018 may seem a long time away, but I strongly recommend that anyone in the latter category starts early to ensure they have sufficient resources to put the changes in place.
I find it hard to believe that I am now well over half way through my first year as Chair of the Compliance Professional Interest Forum, and I have barely scraped the surface with the things I want to achieve. Our core objective is to put on a series of events that bring focus to a particular subject, which ultimately helps you with the challenging work you have to do and keeps you informed about developments in regulatory change.
The Forum’s first meeting of the year covered MiFID II – a general overview of the regulatory change that will impact most of the firms represented at the Forum. Those of you in larger firms are probably some way down the road with your thinking on MiFID, so we decided to focus on smaller firms for this session, giving an overview of what the changes are going to be. This turned out to be a very thought-provoking event, which is the least we try to achieve on each occasion. The next meeting in March is titled ‘The role of the FCA: retail versus wholesale – standing in the shoes of the consumer’. Following that, the May meeting will cover ‘Competition’. Both, in their different ways, are subjects we need to get to grips with.
For those looking for more detail, I suggest you look out for events being run by other Professional Interest Forums, and in particular the European Regulation Forum, which ran a number of MiFID-related events in 2015, and continues to monitor the latest updates.
A quick reminder that we continue to need subjects to raise with the FCA Practitioner Panel, and the committee is still considering topics for the 2016 Forum programme, so please do let us know if there is anything you would particularly like us to cover. Please contact Christian.scott@cisi.org and he will pass on your thoughts to me and the Committee.