Spare light bulbs for all; illuminating the compliance debate

We’re now well underway in our ambitious plan to visit all of our members over the coming fourteen months, with the aim of seeing everyone – and confirming that they’re doing the right things as regards compliance – by the end of 2017.

Related topics:  Commercial,  Commercial finance
Adam Tyler | CEO - NACFB
15th November 2016
adam tyler nacfb

That date seems a long way off, but with so many members scattered over nearly 100,000 square miles, we’re having to put our logistical hats on.

We like to describe what we’re doing as something like an MOT, but it’s a little more subtle than that because there are no “fails”. If your rear screen wiper isn’t working, we will tell you that you should fix it, but in practice we’re finding much smaller issues. It’s more the kind of MOT where they say in passing, “Did you know you need to pack spare light bulbs and a hi-viz gilet if you’re planning to travel in France” and the broker says “no, that message hadn’t got through to me” and the job is done because now the broker knows what’s expected of him and what the FCA will ask to see should they come calling. We don’t fail them, to continue the analogy, because we are not the French police. But we want them to be ready, and not to be caught out, if ever they’re pulled over on the autoroute.

So, how is the process going so far? Very well, although the initial batch who volunteered to be first in the queue are a self-selected subset of brokers who you would expect to be fully aware of the regulations. It takes a while to set everything up and those who have done it are the ones you would expect to say “we’ve got that requirement out of the way, now let’s get this one out of the way as well,” and so we wouldn’t expect to find any holes in their set-up. It will probably be in January and February next year that we start to be properly useful because that’s when we’ll begin meeting people who are not quite so confident about their arrangements for a potential FCA visit.

With that proviso out of the way, it is nevertheless very comforting to know that every one of the brokers we have seen so far would sail through any stress-test imposed by the FCA. And even if in 2017 we find some brokers for whom that is not quite the case, we’ll be able to make sure it is the case by the time we move on!

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