Nelly Blog – Thinking Outside The Tick Box

It may be a brand-new year and a new decade, but the same old problem remains for regulated firms still struggling to deliver compliance training that actually changes behaviour, ergo culture.

In our latest webinar ‘Thinking outside the (tick) box’ with Professor Patricia Riddell of Reading University and Global Head of Learning at ERM Andy Hurren, only 13% of our audience of senior compliance, risk and learning professionals within regulated firms said that they were ‘fairly confident’ that their compliance and risk training programmes were effective. This is worrying but comes as no surprise to me as financial regulated firms, getting to grips with SM&CR, are still far too reliant on e-Learning compliance training to positively affect behavioural changes. This sheep dip approach to training is probably the worst kept secret in the sector, which is why The FCA has told firms in The Stocktake Report that it will this year increase its supervisory focus on how Conduct Rules training is delivered and competency evidenced.

With this mandate from the regulator, L&D, risk and compliance professionals in financial regulated firms, need to review and reflect on the effectiveness of their compliance training programmes and not being afraid to ask themselves the following questions:

• ‘Is our current approach to compliance training doing enough to meet the regulators’ expectations?;
• ‘How should our approach to compliance training change to engage all learners and provoke a positive change in behaviour that can be truly evidenced?’;
• ‘How well does our current approach to compliance training mitigate the known and unknown compliance risks to our business?’

When our clients answer these questions honestly, they go beyond ticking boxes, annoying learners and worrying what the regulator expects of them. Instead, they see tangible data-driven behaviour change, employee engagement scores above 80%, knowledge retention rates of learners at 89%.

If the UK is to retain its global leadership in the Financial Services market, we have to do more than tick a box. We actually have to ensure all sector employees are knowledgeable and competent and behave appropriately and fairly at all times.