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News – 18.11.24
International Men's Day - breaking the silence around men's mental health
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A change in US Presidency: How might it affect your finances?
In this article, we explore the potential economic and financial impacts of Donald Trump's return to power. … Read more
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The consultation closes on 18 December 2023, and we will see a detailed policy statement in 2024 to implement the proposed changes.
The broad objective of the FCA is to achieve a more representative and respectful industry culture and through this, the FCA will continue its endeavours to create a more accessible, fairer, and safer culture for Financial Services employees.
The clear message was:“while progress has been made, much more is needed”. By way of example, the paper cited that fewer than one in five C-suite positions in banking, capital markets and payments are currently held by women.
The FCA’s goal here is to set out non-financial misconduct (NFM) clearly and explicitly within both the Conduct Rules and the fitness and propriety regime. Examples of NFM may include bullying, sexual harassment, and discrimination.
Firms seeking FCA regulation would need to meet threshold conditions, which the FCA proposes extending to include sexual or racially motivated offences or evidence that the firm, or someone connected with it, has practised discrimination.
All firms will need to complete a new return on RegData annually to disclose to the FCA, the number of employees. Firms with over 251 employees would be expected to gather and report certain D&I data for board, senior leadership, and all employees. Submitted annually, it would include data on demographic characteristics, inclusion metrics and targets, with Regulators proposing that firms make such findings publicly available.
Here’s a link to a sample template published by the FCA for illustrative purposes only.
Finally, a new chapter has been proposed for the Senior Management Arrangements, Systems and Controls (SYSC) sourcebook within the FCA Handbook. It would deal with implementing D&I strategies by larger firms, data disclosure, setting targets to address under-representation, and treating D&I as a non-financial risk in their governance.
Firms would have until 2025 to implement the changes.
If approved, this will add to the business’ compliance monitoring and reporting requirements. The FCA proposes to tighten and sharpen the rules and seeks to embed non-financial misconduct considerations into staff fitness and propriety assessments, Conduct Rules and suitability criteria for financial services firms. This may apply stricter rules to some more junior staff and allow past infractions to be revealed to potential future employers. To ensure a smooth transition, organisations must ensure staff are aware of these changes and, if necessary, address their working culture accordingly.
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