In my recent white paper, The Circle of Life, I explored the four forces of change that are impacting banking and the wider financial services sector and that should be considered when developing risk mitigation strategies.

• Capitalisation: having insufficient reserves to deal with downturns or incidents within prescribed tolerances to avoid the taxpayer bailouts of the past.
• Regulation: increased regulation from several organisations domestically (Bank of England, Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)) and internationally as well as the fines and penalties they can levy to organisations that they deem as non-compliant.
• Competition: particularly from those embracing technology and new business models that appeal to consumers who are willing and eager to self-educate and self-serve online.
• Obsoletion: the opposite of Futurism or investing in science & technology to safeguard your future, leading to long term decline that cannot be reversed.

This article looks in more detail at regulation, how firms are responding to the changing face of  our regulatory environment and how they embed compliance and risk management into their business change and transformation agenda. Just as the summer has presented wide extremes of weather from heatwaves to storms, regulated entities need to be prepared to regulate their temperature without creating unintended issues or unmitigated risk.

To chat more about the challenges facing financial services institutions, please get in touch with me.