Featured Vacancy – Risk and Compliance Consultant – London – £45,000

London based Asset Management firm is seeking a high calibre Risk and Compliance Consultant to lead regulatory projects and drive ownership of compliance into the business.

Featured Vacancy – Regulated Complaints Handler – Peterborough – £30,000

Our financial services client is seeking a Regulated Complaints Handler to assist with handling customers’ complaints, primarily managing through to conclusion complaints which have a regulatory focus. 

Accountabilities include:

• Investigate regulatory complaints, provide full responses to customers, and support root cause analysis
• Occasional preparation and qualification of management information including regulatory reporting
• Meet relevant service, quality and output standards
• Maintain a working knowledge of current FSA and other relevant regulation to ensure their approach to handling regulatory complaints is fair, robust and appropriate
• Apply the principles of Treating Customers Fairly to enable the Society to demonstrate that it is meeting regulatory rules and guidance on Treating Customers Fairly.

Click Here to submit your CV for consideration.

Featured Vacancy – Compliance Approvals Analyst – North West – £250-300 – 4 month contract

Our client is seeking two experienced Compliance Analysts with knowledge of communications/financial promotions practice and regulation gained within financial services.

Role Profile:

To review and assess items of customer facing communication and product literature to ensure that our communications are fair, clear and not misleading, complying with the relevant regulatory and legislative requirements.

Featured Vacancy – Marketing Communication Project Manager – London – £400 – £600 – 6 month contract

Our client, a leading financial services organisation is seeking a marketing Communication project manager for an immediate start.

Purpose of role:

The purpose of this role is to plan, manage and deliver projects in scope of the marketing & communications programme. The role will cover all aspects of project management including planning, delivering to time and budget, managing the project team and stakeholder relationships.

Core accountabilities:

Planning – The role holder will be required to quickly grasp the high level business requirement and finalize the approach, estimates and plan together with marketing and Business representatives and communicate the key milestones and timeline.

Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) – Dead in the water or alive and kicking?

Understandably TCF received a lot of attention in the run-up to the two FSA imposed industry deadlines in 2008. This required financial services firms to have robust measures in place to allow an assessment of whether TCF was working, and for TCF to be embedded in the culture of firms. Since then the FSA has taken forward the assessment of fair customer treatment through its ARROW risk assessment methodology. So, what are firms doing about it now, in 2010, and what are the regulators expectations?

Some firms and commentators have suggested that TCF is effectively dead, the FSA failed to drive through any lasting change and it is no longer a priority of the regulator. This suggestion is somewhat naive and misses the point that how you treat your customers was not simply a project to focus on in 2007/2008 but is the right way to do business going forward.

The driving force behind the FSA’s focus on TCF was that for too long the industry had failed to put things right without regulatory intervention (think pensions review, endowment mis-selling, payment protection insurance). Also, TCF was meant to give more freedom to firms to set out their own stall, rather than impose an approach on the industry because of its principles based nature.

Featured Vacancy – Operational Communications Writers – Peterborough – up to £250 a day

Our client, a leading provider of business process outsourcing services for the UK Life and Pensions industry, is looking for a team of Operational Communications Writers to produce communications for a pensions related project (including mailings, literature, and web content).

Senior Compliance Officer

Midlands – Up to £47,000 plus benefits

Our client is one of the UK’s leading Building Societies serving over 1 million customers. They provide a vibrant and forward thinking working environment along with principles that have helped them deliver strong financial results year on year.

Due to the increased complexity, volume and impact of regulatory changes, the Compliance team is looking for a Senior Compliance Officer to expand the existing team.

The successful candidate will support the business in the interpretation and application of existing regulatory requirements (including FSA Handbook), and track developing regulatory themes and initiatives emerging both within the UK and EU. An ability or demonstrated potential to assess the commercial applications of these developments is essential.

This vacancy provides an excellent opportunity to contribute to the consistent and ongoing achievement of compliance standards within the business through commercial interpretation of regulation and the development of compliance related processes and initiatives across the business. This role is suited both to those that fulfill a similar role now and those who have relevant compliance experience and can demonstrate the capability to quickly develop these skills. Candidates should have an expert understanding of the relevant statutory regulations (FSA Handbook and COB Sourcebook). At least three years experience within financial services compliance is also essential.

If you meet the above criteria and this role interests you, then please submit your CV for consideration

Featured Vacancy – Internal Auditor – Cirencester – £35’000

Our client, a leading wealth management company, is seeking an experienced Internal Auditor.

The Internal Auditor will provide an independent assurance of the adequacy and effectiveness of operational management and control processes throughout the organisation and its outsourced partners.

Role requirements include:

• To contribute to the continuous improvement of control processes so that they operate at maximum effectiveness and cost efficiency

• To conduct risk focused assignments that identify areas of potential risk exposure or control weakness

• To provide reliable and balanced audit opinions that take full account of the costs, benefits and business value of the proposed controls

Business Simulations – How it Works.

Harry Potter fans will remember the Time-Turner device given to Hermione Granger so she could attend more classes in her third year than time would allow.  What a useful business tool that would be: peeking into the future before winding back time and nailing the deal!

This is precisely how Business Simulations work.  By replicating business situations different methods, strategies and ideas can be tried out to review different outcomes.  The benefits of ‘practising’ in a safe environment provides the opportunity to build confidence and develop key business skills.

Organisations expect a lot from their people, expectations that are rarely met.  Why?

There could be a lot of reasons.  But here’s an example you may relate to. 

A company needs to reduce inventory to free up cash.  They need their managers to monitor stock levels in line with ordering and cash flow.  To help them, the company sends all their first-line managers on a comprehensive business finance course.  The result……………

Huntswood become sponsors of the Financial Services Discussion Club

Huntswood, a specialist provider of consulting and customer service solutions to regulated industries, has recently become lead sponsor for the Financial Services Discussion Club (FSDC).

The FSDC is an industry discussion forum for senior managers in the sector. The club handles such sector topics as complaint handling, asset management and compliance. These forums attract Heads of Service and other senior mangers that have an interest in regulatory issues within the financial services sector.

Huntswood’s Group Commercial Director, Craig Coffield, said “the FSDC enables key players within the financial services sector to discuss pertinent industry issues, providing a platform for knowledge and information sharing. Huntswood has been supporting regulated organisations for over 10 years, and our experience, insight and vision mean we are ideally placed to facilitate these informative discussions”.

Topics for discussion are selected by members, which represent both the retail and industrial sectors. On the 25^th January, John Seaton, a principal consultant at Huntswood, chaired the first in a series of events based around complaint handling.