With the publication of his latest book, snappily entitled “Compliance – A Short Book”, Adam Samuel has delivered (arguably) what is the UK’s first pocket-sized guide to compliance for compliance experts and financial professionals.
Adam is already likely be well known to many working in financial services here in the UK. He is one of the UK’s longest standing, independent compliance experts with decades of work advising financial advisers and retail financial services firms on how to adhere to the regulations and serve their clients and customers better.
Adam also served many years on the Ethics Committee of the Institute of Financial Planning where he helped to design and run its disciplinary processes, while working with regulators in four countries and commenting and writing on a host of compliance matters.
Now Adam has brought all this knowledge and experience to bear on the creation of a small but incredibly useful book, the self-explanatory “Compliance – A Short book”.
This is the first ever pocket-size guide to the biggest subject in modern financial services life. In just 93 pages, the reader can ask and answer the key questions that compliance departments and managers should be tackling.
It also enables financial services professionals to better understand what good compliance people are trying to achieve and why. Since all practitioners, regardless of the size of their firm, encounter the types of issues discussed here, this book is very much for everyone.
Using real examples, drawn mainly from the financial services world, Adam shows how good and sometimes great compliance people do their job. He also exposes some of the inadequate “computer-says-no” approach that can cause financial practitioners to become hugely frustrated with the compliance process.
For instance, Adam explains how fines for pension mis-selling and promotions actually stemmed from issues with the governance of the relevant funds and the monitoring of selling annuities and indeed any pension product over the telephone.
Adam Samuel says: “Compliance often has a negative reputation. Like most tasks, it can be done excellently or appallingly and indeed everything in between. Done badly it can ignore the bigger picture and focus on the petty. Compliance people can place themselves in the proverbial “ivory tower” and fail to engage effectively with the wider organisation.
“Or they can work with financial services professionals to provide much-needed challenge, but also to improve the service on offer to clients and customers while minimising the risks of something going wrong.
“Some great and innovative minds have worked either in or around compliance. At times, they have helped introduce significantly higher standards of business practice. They have managed extraordinary projects to ensure that millions receive compensation and at times negotiated for the survival of businesses and of jobs where regulators may well have felt entitled to close those businesses down. Understanding the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ can only help regulated firms avoid pitfalls and become better businesses.”
