When Was Your Last Compliance Health Check?

Does your Compliance framework meet your regulatory obligations?

We recommend that an independent and objective Compliance Health Check is completed every few years, however there may be reasons to undertake this more often, for example a merger or acquisition, or as part of a company restructure.

Health Checks typically included checking governance arrangements, policies, procedural documentation through to assessing the effectiveness of the risk and compliance framework. They are designed to provide a reasonable assurance that the compliance systems and controls deployed are sufficiently robust and mitigate the risk of non-compliance. 

A Compliance Health Check will give you and senior management comfort and peace of mind that the compliance arrangements deployed at a regulated Financial Services firm are effective and fit for purpose. 

Compliance Health Checks are flexible, they can focus on specific business lines or activities. Depending on the level of scrutiny or coverage required, ordinarily they would assess the following:

1. Governance arrangements.
2. Adequacy of regulatory licences and permissions.
3. Compliance arrangements (inc. risk registers compliance monitoring, resources, and reporting.
4. Fitness and propriety, training & competency.
5. Prudential standards.
6. Conduct of business.
7. Anti-Money laundering and Financial Crime.
8. Client and money assets.
9. Market conduct; client communications and product governance.
10. Conflicts of interests.
11. Complaints.
12. Outsourcing & third-party arrangements.
13. Business continuity and operational resilience.

What are the benefits of a Compliance Health Check?

• A Compliance Health Check gives you an independent assessment of whether the risk and compliance governance framework are in line with regulatory expectations.
• An independent assessment is a beneficial part of effective oversight processes and to satisfy senior management’s governance expectations.
• An effective Health Check assessment will identify failings and weaknesses, risk rate them, together with recommended remediation actions and time frames or implementation and follow-up.
• Supports senior management to demonstrate it is taking reasonable steps to assess and challenge the effectiveness of it risk and compliance framework.
• An effective Health Check should allow firms to allocate their compliance resources more effectively to those areas proposing greatest risks and/or require improvements.

Danos Consulting is a specialist consultancy firm for leading organisations across Financial Services, Commerce and Industry and the Public Sector. We have a track record for delivering flexible compliance Health Checks for UK and Offshore firms, from light touch reviews that assess your current compliance, risk, and governance arrangements, to comprehensive reviews where we deliver a programme of reviews across your whole compliance management framework, identifying gaps and weaknesses and providing action plans on how to achieve improvements.  

If you would like to discuss this further, please contact Jamie Anderson who will be very happy to advise on the right solutions to ensure you are meeting your regulatory responsibilities.

Jamie Anderson | Danos Consulting
E: janderson@danosconsulting.com | T: +44 (0) 20 7610 6442