Compliance Monitor

There's never a dull year in financial regulation and 2024 has proved no exception. Emma Radmore examines where we are ending the 12 months - whether some developments that we expected have occurred, what has taken us by surprise and what to look forward to in 2025.

With yet another mis-selling cleanup in process, this time in motor finance, the regulator has issued a Call for Input "to better identify and manage mass redress events to ensure better outcomes". The Financial Conduct Authority should take a hard look at its own role in these recurrences and avoid "regulation by lobby group" rather than expertise, warns Adam Samuel.

Though we live in the digital age, companies face an ever-increasing regulatory burden when transferring personal data outside of the EU and UK - amid a complex web of differing jurisdictional approaches, compliance gaps and onerous expectations. Miriam Everett explores the legal challenges.

Following international initiatives on climate-related financial disclosures as well as nature-related financial disclosures, a new coalition of companies, financial institutions, labour representatives and development organisations is working on a framework for inequality and social-related financial disclosures. Charlotte Witherington and Daniel Hirschfield review the launch paper of the TISFD, which sets out the taskforce's proposed scope, approach, governance structure and workplan.

Though the United Kingdom has no purely AI-focused regulatory framework, financial services firms should prepare themselves for heightened supervision over their deployment of artificial intelligence and ensure compliance with a multitude of diverse and broadly-focused requirements. Alexandra Green and Michael Sholem set out how to approach this task.

Starling, a digital challenger bank, expanded far quicker than its capacity to maintain compliance with sanctions screening as well as other financial crime control requirements. As a result, the regulator has clipped its wings by imposing substantial remediation measures, reports Denis O'Connor.

The FCA has unveiled its first plans for a new type of regulated activity - targeted support - by publishing its initial ideas on defined contribution pensions.

The FCA has issued provisional fines and bans on two individuals nine years after an external compliance consultant warned them that the business model they relied upon did not meet regulatory requirements.

The FCA is paying out approximately £200,000 to more than 300 people who invested through an unregistered P2P platform that was, nevertheless, included as a bone fide firm on an FCA register.

The FCA is creating a new investment disclosure system to cover 'Consumer Composite Investments' (CCI) - one which is designed to be "fit for many years to come" and to cover funds and other products held by over 12 million UK investors.