On February 15th, we hosted a website alongside the Association of Professional Compliance Consultants (APCC) where we discussed what it takes to build and maintain a successful career in the wonderful world of compliance.
Our two panellists—Graham Levi-Samper, Director at Complyport, and David Symes, Managing Director at Compliance Recruitment Solutions—spoke to us about getting started in compliance, what qualities are required of an efficient compliance officer, and how to stay current with the sector’s many regulatory changes.
For those AGRC members who missed the event, you can download the full transcript below.
Here are a few of the event’s main highlight for everyone else. Happy reading.
What university degrees are best suited for someone looking to enter the compliance sector or what university degrees are organizations looking for when they want to hire someone into a compliance team?
David Symes: “I’ll honestly say that most employers worry more about the calibre of the university and the grade achieved. Sometimes they’re trying to change that to encourage diversity so take your name of the university off, etc., but if there is a preference, then it is either a business or economics degree or frequently a law degree. Although, at this stage, I want to point out to anyone looking to get in, experience always trumps qualifications. So if you can find a way of getting some temp experience in a compliance, an AML, or a risk function or as an intern, get that experience on your CV, you’ve got a much better chance of breaking in than someone else.”
What sort of soft skills are required of a compliance officer to succeed?
Graham Levy Samper: “I think for me, interpersonal communication has to be quite high up there, if not top of the list. You are going to be dealing with the C-suite, you’re going to be dealing with the Board, you’re going to be dealing with the CEO of a company. You’re also going to be dealing with, depending on where you are, bankers or brokers and they are all very different animals, very different people in their mindsets, in how they approach things, and you need to work with them, and for them to try and basically keep them on the right track, but also let them do within reason what they want to do or what they’re trying to do.”
“Adding to that, it’s problem solving. They’ll come to you with an issue that they need to deal with or something that they want to do and the way they want to do it might not be quite right, but you can potentially suggest or you should be there and suggest solutions to them and provide those sort of skills there to enable them to carry on the business they want to do without infringing or causing you sleepless nights. That’s the main thing, I think, in terms of the soft skills.”
“I think also it’s knowing time management. There are business critical things that need to be done at a particular point in time, financial reporting to the FCA, anything that is reportable, there’s a hard deadline, you cannot miss those for fear of any further sanctions from the regulator, particularly if you’re in the retail space, particularly if you’re involved with client money. We’ve seen a real change from yesterday in terms of where they’re looking at things, we’ve seen a marked increase in the number of section 166s being invoked for various thematic reviews, so it’s just bearing in mind that timing is critical for some things. Other things can be put off or left to the back burner, but there are some things that you have to get done in a particular time frame.”
What is the best way for a compliance professional to familiarize themselves with the wide array of regulations that need to be followed?
Graham Levy Samper: “Get help from a consultant. Sort of doing a beating of the drum, I mean this is what compliance consultancies exist for really, we are there to support and help compliance officers dealing with the vast amount of regulations, the vast amount of rules and everything else and news items, cases, all the pronouncements that come from the FCA, and all the other regulators. It’s tricky, there are services out there, they’re paid-for services, there are various summaries that you can obtain through both the FCA themselves for free by signing up to their newsletters, but it’s not necessarily easy to pick your way through to the actual meat of the situation when you’re looking at something that’s maybe 300 pages long, as it was with some of the recent regulations that have come out, to get a summary that actually is meaningful to you or the applicability of it to you. I mean, looking at things like consumer duty and the changes to financial promotions that have come about recently, get help. The best way of doing it is either have a team around you or utilize a team of experts to support you, there is too much for one person alone because whether you’re in a small firm or a large firm, I mean in a large firm you’re probably going to have benefit of a team, but in a small firm you are just that one person that has to digest all of this, that’s coming from left, right and centre, and then summarize it for the board and put it into some coherent context.”
David Symes: “I just regret how difficult it is. I think one of the problems is, I retired from the front lines some time ago, I hear about new areas and I look them up on the FCA rule book and think, “Well, I didn’t even know that area existed as a concept.” So knowing even that there’s a regulatory issue to look at, because you can look it up if you know that this is covered and work it out for yourself, but you didn’t know it was covered and you had to take a certain action then, that itself is a problem. And unless you work for a very large company with its own technical department then, yeah, I’d agree with Graham. Also, if you have industry discussion groups, then that’s a very good way for you to get to know someone well who works for a similar company, and if you have an issue or you’re not even sure that there is an issue, you can just ring or email that person up, they won’t tell you the detail because of confidentiality or conflict, whatever, but, yeah, is there a rule on this and if so, what is the best way of looking at it? We used to do that when I was on the front line and it worked wonders.”