Selecting your Compliance Consultant
Choosing the right compliance consultant is key to ensuring compliance with the relevant regulatory requirements.
Choosing the right compliance consultant is important: if there is failure to meet the applicable regulatory requirements and standards, it is you – not the consultant – who the regulator will hold to account.
The regulator will expect you to act responsibly when selecting a compliance consultant, as you would when recruiting an employee. You must be able to demonstrate that you have carried out appropriate due diligence and made the right enquiries about the consultant you have appointed.
We have set out below some of the questions you should ask when taking on or using a compliance consultant and we are pleased to give you our responses to these questions.
Skills, competence and credentials
Does the consultant have the necessary experience and qualifications to help you and your type of firm?
We employ a robust team of compliance consultants drawn from all sectors of the industry with many years of highly-relevant experience in their chosen disciplines. All of our consultants hold relevant industry qualifications and many are qualified accountants or lawyers.
How does the consultant keep up to date with regulatory and product changes?
Our experienced compliance professionals advise and train clients on regulatory issues on a regular basis. Many of our consultants are industry expert writers and speakers on regulatory matters and we provide clients with a monthly Regulatory Update to ensure they are kept up to date with all the latest compliance developments in the region.
Have you asked for a sample of the consultant’s clients and taken references?
Whilst our policy is not to release any client’s name without their prior consent, we are happy to provide prospects with appropriate references prior to formally engaging us.
Have you thoroughly reviewed the consultants’ biographies?
Do they have relevant knowledge and experience? Our consultants’ biographies are available publicly on our website – Our People. Our consultants have many years’ highly-relevant practitioner experience as former compliance officers, regulatory supervisors or holders of other important control positions in authorised firms.
Does the consultant have a sufficient number of appropriately skilled resources to support your firm?
Between them, our consultants have compliance and anti-money laundering experience across all the major sectors within the financial services industry. Every engagement is personally overseen by a designated Engagement Director whose responsibility is to ensure that expert advice is always to hand and that appropriate staff are available to deliver the attention and level of service that is expected.
Is the consultant established in the UAE?
We were the first independent compliance consultancy firm to establish in the ADED, in 2019.
Our presence in both the DIFC and the ADGM ensures that we are always close to our clients and can provide them with the appropriate level of legal protection.
Does the consultant have Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII)?
It is essential that your consultant maintains sufficient PII to cover your firm for any attributable losses. Waystone maintains full PII cover.
Provision of services
Can the consultant provide the type and level of service you need?
Compliance World provides the full range of compliance and regulatory services including:
- regulatory, interpretation, analysis and advice
- customised manuals, checklists and other operational aids to compliance
- applications for licensing and authorisation
- identifying and assessing compliance and other operational risks
- advising on organisation structures and corporate governance arrangements
- designing and implementing appropriate policies, procedures, systems and controls
- providing experienced individuals to act as Compliance Officer and MLRO and general secondments
- carrying out compliance monitoring programmes and reporting to management
- project management in relation to risk mitigation programmes and remediation strategies
- pre-authorisation and ongoing training for staff and senior management.
Has your consultant set out in writing the services they will provide?
Before undertaking any assignment on a client’s behalf, Waystone will set out full details of its services and how they will be provided in a detailed Engagement Letter. Amongst other things, our Engagement Letter will set service standards as to:
- provision of services
- charges and payments
- obligations of both client and consultant
- cancellation or termination of agreement
- jurisdiction
- liability and indemnity
- confidentiality, publicity, intellectual property and data protection
- complaints and dispute resolution
- professional indemnity insurance
- conflicts of interest.
How will you satisfy yourself that the consultant is providing the service you need to achieve compliance? How will you know if the consultant has helped?
Our detailed Engagement Letter will provide sufficient information for you to determine whether we are delivering the required service whilst our compliance monitoring and reporting will enable you to determine whether our intervention has been beneficial. Throughout the engagement, we will maintain an open and transparent dialogue with the governing body and senior management in order that there is always clarity as to current issues, progress being made and the standard of compliance achieved.