For solo-regulated firms, the SM&CR implementation date has arrived. We’re proud to have successfully prepared some of the UK’s best known financial brands for this impending regime. What we have also discovered is that surprisingly, many firms are still not ready and there’s a surprising reason as to why.
Do you work in compliance, HR, risk & legal, project management or operations? Are you struggling to get the Senior Management Team to grasp the importance of this?
Don’t panic! Our goal is to help firms like yourself prepare for implementation, later we will help you prepare for certification (deadline 9th December 2020). That’s why we’ve shared these 5 most common reasons Senior Managers are doing nothing and how you can overcome them.
“We can manage without a system”
Even with a very small population of individuals captured, management of the regime using disparate systems, spreadsheets and manual processes soon becomes problematical. In order to demonstrate compliance, it’s important to have a single source of truth and a system that automates the workflows and enforces good record keeping to ensure things are completed in a timely, compliant manner. Furthermore, the ability to report across a range of scheme factors is a real gift when compiling MI for the purposes of Board Packs and regulatory reports.
“We have really high numbers of staff captured and inputting them all will be a nightmare”
No problem, we have a suite of published APIs that can used to integrate with your HR system to pull in the details of your hierarchy of employees. We have experience of working with most, if not all, of the most prevalent HR solutions on the market and our experienced technical team are adept at helping our customers in this regard.
“We think we can handle this in our HR system?”
We heard this a small number of times when the banks were implementing the SM&CR regime and from our direct experience, it seems this scenario did not work. There are many processes/workflows, activities, forms, reports/dashboards, data extracts etc. that need to be managed within SM&CR and Worksmart have been developing our software full-time since 2015. This is not something any HR software provider will take on lightly and if they do, the cost of customising the HR software to now manage SM&CR would prove to be very expensive (could be up to five times more than buying a dedicated solution) and time-consuming to develop. As your software partner, Worksmart will be closely tracking the evolution of the regulatory framework and making the necessary adjustments to the software so you can be assured that you will remain in compliance. This is something you would have to pay your HR solution provider to do (if they have the time and resources) and this will likely be a chargeable activity.
“We are not ready for the software side of things yet, we are still working out our governance structure and people caught by the regime.”
Worksmart have a Regulatory Consulting and Engagement team that regularly assist firms specifically at this stage. The consulting days can be purchased individually or as a block of days. In some circumstances, our consultants may use the software to undertake modelling exercises, or to visually identify where the remaining gaps are. If you would like an initial conversation with one of our consultants, we can set this up.
“We are struggling to understand the key differences between the various solutions we have seen as they all seem very similar?”
If this is the case, it may come down to usability! Worksmart have been working with a User Experience/User Interface consultant (previous experience with Apple) when designing the SM&CR solution and we are confident that you will be able to pick up and use the system in a very short period of time. Just to allay any concerns, we can offer an ‘Assisted Trial’ session at no additional cost, where you can invite some of your key stakeholders to get some ‘hands-on’ experience with the system.
We understand that buy-in from all individuals is paramount and this must be driven from the top!
In addition to market leading SM&CR software, Worksmart offer award winning consulting and training services to help your teams understand the culture of accountability and the impact and consequences of the regime.
We hope that answering these common reasons will aid you in preparing for SM&CR. If we can be of further assistance in helping you on your journey to implementation, please get in touch.