Unpacking The Consumer Duty: Reflections from FCA and practitioners

Joanna Legg,
Joanna currently work's as Head of Department in the cross-cutting policy and strategy Directorate at the FCA.

Joanna lead teams responsible for: implementation of the Consumer Duty, covering the FCA's policy work and cross-cutting projects; vulnerability and financial inclusion; and consumer partnerships.Before this Joanna was Head of the department responsible for coordinating the FCA's response to the rising cost of living and consumer research, including the Financial Lives Survey.

She has led policy teams at the FCA working on: consumer investments and financial advice; bringing the pre-paid funeral plans market into statutory regulation; and preparing the wholesale and asset management sectors for the Brexit in addition to supporting the coordination of organisation-wide operational planning through the EU withdrawal programme and change projects.Joanna has worked on a range of financial services regulation from a policy and implementation perspective, and is an expert on policy-making processes.

Prior to the FCA Joanna worked in the Europe Directorate at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as a research analyst.

Nicola Ball, BDO
Nicola is a Director in BDO’s Financial Services Advisory team, focusing on regulatory conduct and compliance across Financial Services. She has over 15 years experience helping firms navigate regulatory change and deal with key compliance issues such as Consumer Duty.Nicola helps lead BDO’s Consumer Duty proposition, working with a number of clients to deliver on the requirements and provide assurance to their Consumer Duty programmes. She has also completed a number of secondments, including as Head of Conduct Risk, providing oversight to the business and developing their Conduct MI and governance framework.

Amit Rao, Forvis Mazars
Amit has over 14 years’ industry and regulatory experience in the UK financial services sector. With several years’ industry experience as a compliance manager and MLRO.

Amit has worked in an advisory capacity since 2014 and has extensive experience of advising a wide variety of financial institutions on regulatory and compliance matters.His regulatory advisory experience includes conducting internal investigations and reviews following the discovery of suspected compliance issues; advising firms in relation to managing communications with regulators; assisting firms with FCA investigations and enforcement proceedings and supporting firms with the development and implementation of business reviews and redress/remediation exercises.

Kathryn Shepley, Grant Thornton
Kathryn is an Associate Director within Grant Thornton’s Financial Services Advisory practice. She has over nine years of regulatory experience in financial services, offering a strong attention to detail and technical conduct knowledge.Kathryn specialises in providing regulatory advice to clients across multiple sectors and jurisdictions. She has worked on numerous Skilled Person reviews and assists firms to implement regulatory change, including the Consumer Duty. Kathryn has worked with several firms in a secondment capacity and therefore has practical experience of implementing advice and recommendations.

Chris Steele, Partner, KPMG
Chris has over 20 years of experience at KPMG working in the financial Services banking practice advising clients on their governance, regulatory, conduct and customer agendas. His main focus is large scale programs driven by regulatory change.

He has led large teams on complex engagements which require significant senior stakeholder management and management of regulatory risk. He has broad knowledge of the regulatory challenges facing banking businesses, leading investigations and large scale rectification programmes, that combined with spending time at the Financial Services Authority has given him a unique perspective when assisting firms navigate their latest challenges.

Reuben Wales, Head of the Financial Services Faculty, ICAEW
Reuben was previously at the FCA where he covered technical roles in Competition and Economics and most recently managed a team responsible for prudentially assessing higher risk mergers and acquisitions. Prior to his time at the regulator, he worked at Close Brothers plc, where he was responsible for delivering strategic financial and prudential analysis. He has a deep interest in the future of financial services regulation in the UK, including themes that touch upon the health of competition in markets and market stability.