This report focuses on key issues in the financial services and insurance markets such as environmental, social and governance sustainability and responsibility.
In 2020 Reactionsnet.com named Browne Jacobson as Law Firm of the Year for the London Market. We are now pleased to provide a report on the culture of that market. The issues raised in the report may also be of interest to other markets and businesses.
The report is on surveys conducted by Grist and Coleman Parkes Research as to London Market practitioners’ perceptions of key attributes of the culture, conduct and governance at their current and other firms.
The report is called ‘reflections caught’ and addresses perceptions just before, and during the main ‘lockdown’ phase of, the Covid pandemic up to March 2021.
One of the key findings was a perception that current compliance processes aimed at preventing misconduct and conduct risk are less effective for those working from home. The report explains how Browne Jacobson can help to improve a firm’s processes and perceptions, whether a firm’s personnel are office-based, home working or ‘hybrid working’.
Melissa Collett, Professional Standards Director of the CII, has kindly provided a foreword to the report. As Melissa puts it: “By holding up a mirror to the market and sharing good practice, this report can help firms develop cultures which achieve better outcomes for those that rely on their professional expertise.”
The report is a key step for Browne Jacobson’s ‘FSI: ESG’ team that focuses on environmental, social and governance (ESG) sustainability and responsibility in the financial services and insurance markets (FSI). The team’s aim is to help clients in those and other markets to enhance their conduct, culture and capital in a changing environment.
The outcome of the Employment Tribunal claim brought by Gulnaz Raja against Starling Bank Limited (1) (Starling), and Matthew Newman (2) was reported last month.
This article is the second in a series to help firms take a practical approach to complying with the ‘cross-cutting rules’ within the new ‘Consumer Duty’ (CD) framework. The article summarises what it seems the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is seeking to achieve from the applicable rules (section 2 below) and potential complications arising from legal considerations (section 3).
Claims arising from interest-only mortgages have been farmed in volume. Many such claims to date have sought to drive a narrative that interest-only mortgages are an inherently toxic product and brokers were negligent simply for suggesting them. Taylor is a helpful recalibration, focussing instead on what the monies raised by the mortgage product were being used for and whether the client understood the inherent risks.
Created at the end of the Brexit transition period, Retained EU Law is a category of domestic law that consists of EU-derived legislation retained in our domestic legal framework by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. This was never intended to be a permanent arrangement as parliament promised to deal with retained EU law through the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (the “Bill”).
