Ethical conduct has become a high priority in financial services. Following a series of high profile scandals ranging from the mis-selling of PPI to the 2008 global banking crisis.  Authorities the world over have demanded greater transparency and greater accountability in the industry to curb the worst excesses.

In Europe, recently introduced regulations like MiFID II and GDPR have created obligations on banks, insurance companies, accountancy firms, financial advisers and others to beef up their internal reporting and monitoring mechanisms so they can demonstrate compliance with statutory standards. More generally, bodies like the UK’s FCA have pursued policies of reducing conduct risk, demanding that organisations under their remit proactively pursue better, fairer outcomes for customers.

In practice, this has put the onus on how service providers monitor and manage behaviours across their own organisations. The first challenge of the conduct risk agenda is that businesses must have complete visibility on quality assurance (QA) and service level metrics, for both front and back office, and must be able to streamline and coordinate oversight to ensure compliance.

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