RDRComply – Supervision, Control, Compliance

Focused and automated management of your RDR supervision

The Retail Distribution Review (introduced in 2013) requires Financial Services Retail and Wealth Management firms to comply with prescriptive guidelines on acceptable levels of competence, conduct and performance for their Financial Advisers – including the way they treat customers and the quality of their advice. Minimum prescriptive levels of CPD, qualification and certification were also set.

As an absolute minimum these must be maintained, recorded and supervised, and are the joint responsibility of both employer and employee. Just ensuring that minimum CPD hour targets are met and Statements of Professional Standing are issued to staff, however, is not enough. The FCA expects firms to go further: through active supervision of the quality and level of compliance those advisers reach in their client and market dealings and their levels of competence to provide such advice.

This activity should be focused on delivering the highest standards across the areas of individual advisor performance, risk, suitability and quality of client advice, conduct and competence. The process of certifying staff annually and achieving Statements of Professional Standing from relevant Accredited Bodies (AB’s) is in itself a significant administrative burden.

In various FCA thematic reviews it has been found that too many firms are letting the minimum CPD requirements drive their T&C/conduct policy and process – rather than the other way around.

Instead firms must:

• gain top down commitment and full staff buy-in to an embedded compliance–based culture;
• focus on ‘what good looks like’ – defining clear KPIs in the areas of conduct, compliance behaviours, knowledge, TCF/suitability and general performance;
• set clear and objective benchmarks by which to measure these KPIs in terms of compliance knowledge and behaviours, job performance, TCF and competence – using multiple data sources, types and tests;
• implement and manage processes to ensure control and the effective delivery of T&C / conduct policy;
• define CPD and development plans for all Advisors (this should be driven by both minimum RDR requirements and competence, knowledge and conduct issues identified from the real-time assessment of KPIs);
• Employ a record management system to control and log assessment, performance and CPD – a T&C/conduct record-keeping system with appropriate access for both advisors and supervisors;
• identify problems, risks and shortfalls in standards and delivery as soon as they occur, dealing with them promptly and recording/tracking outcomes.

HRComply’s online software platform delivers a complete RDR management product solution – RDRComply – which allows you to take control of all these processes and ensure that you plan, track and deliver the required levels of competence, conduct and performance.

In this way you can meet the FCA’s expectations whilst maintaining appropriate access and controls and the required records and audit trails.

RDRComply enables you to:

• set up relevant KPIs across the three areas;
• upload data from multiple sources and through links to other systems
• perform constant benchmarking tests against due date and numeric target data;
• identify shortfalls as soon as they occur by R-A-G alerts on the dashboard overview screen;
• take prompt and appropriate remediation action, setting new performance targets and CPD needs;
• monitor completion of these and keep records for easy reporting and audit trail management;
• track your CPD through multiple training delivery types – automatically updating advisor logs, adding to training plans, managing progress and performance scoring;
• generate CISI and other professional body/SPS returns and issuance
• link training objectives to e-learning platforms and all other training types/events, enabling you to set and monitor knowledge testing;
• automate and manage 1:1s, File Reviews, Competence assessments, Observations;
• track and record all the above and automate/manage certification by Adviser and Product;
• assess suitability and quality of advice and client on-boarding.