Sumit Bhardwaj

Insightful statistics from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) reveal that 70% of organisations say it has boosted the UK's position as a top financial services destination. This is because it has enabled the country to boost adherence to financial compliance. It has also helped reduce errors and maintain standards. Do you think the FCA has helped the UK improve compliance in its financial sector? Please share your thoughts with me in my comment section below. Find more here: https://heyor.ca/aiKZ8d Got further queries? Please email us with your questions at [email protected]. #FinancialConductAuthority FCA #FinancialServicesRegulations #FinancialCompliance

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https://lnkd.in/eCAau6qp An interesting read and it goes to show you can take on huge corporations and win. Also how long it took is just insane.

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With the FCA's new Consumer Duty regulations, financial services firms are at a pivotal moment. This isn't just about compliance; it's an opportunity to revolutionise our approach to client care and protection. The Consumer Duty calls for a paradigm shift in how we design products, communicate with clients, and deliver value. It's time to move beyond opaque fees and 'set-and-forget' mentalities. We must now demonstrate, with data-driven insights, our commitment to clients' financial goals. By leveraging cutting-edge enablement technology, we can transform this regulatory challenge into a competitive advantage. From AI-powered personalised training to advanced analytics on content effectiveness, we have the tools to create superior client experiences while ensuring compliance. This is our chance to innovate, to set new industry standards, and to build deeper trust with our clients. Are you embracing this change and leading the way in the new era of financial services? https://lnkd.in/gNWqNaBu 

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Small Xama AML update shipped a little earlier this week. We've started integrating smarter UK based address lookup and verification and this is now available to all as part of the verification journey. But making the verification journey easier for the end customer won't be the only benefit. Here's a couple of other items in the short term roadmap we are working on: ⭐ Ability to clean the existing addresses you hold against known UK addresses. ⭐ Warning whether addresses provided are residential or corporate before running an AML check. ⭐ Before running an AML check suggest whether an address might need updating or could be formatted in a way to enhance success. Improving accuracy and giving our users some certainty about their data before running thise AML checks. #amlcompliance https://lnkd.in/e7yjrmsH

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Really enjoyed yesterday's Trust:Live event. Huge thank you to all those who helped us make it such a success. Lots of excellent discussions but here are my key takeaways: 👉 We have a fraud epidemic in the UK 👉 Government fraud strategy needs to rise above politics and be considerably more ambitious e.g reducing fraud by half by 2030. 👉 Fraud strategy needs to be cross-sector: public and private as well as regulated and non-regulated industries. Regulated industries need to work constructively and collaboratively with non-regulated industries to increase their visibility as to how their sectors are being compromised by fraudsters. There are some great examples of where collaboration is starting to happen but we need to scale this up. Stop Scams UK is one great example of an organisation set up to facilitate this collaboration. 👉 Data-sharing has to be made easier and there needs to be more sharing of low risk datasets e.g. from NHS, Post Office etc. to support with proof of existence for identity verification, without the need to share sensitive personal info. 👉 ‘Data moats’ - multiple, diverse datasets - are essential to protecting identities. 👉 Identity exclusion is a real problem for society, not just for those in poverty. There are over a billion people worldwide whose identities can't be verified, leading to financial, social and digital exclusion and, in many cases, extreme distress - one of the major causes of suicide. Research can make bias more conscious and can help to establish methodologies around the cost of exclusion as well as the potential ROI of being more inclusive. 👉 The PSR reimbursement rules are ground-breaking and truly world-leading, but timelines and thresholds need urgent review to avoid unintended consequences such as the stifling of innovation and customer choice. 👉 Synthetic identity is the fastest growing type of fraud. If financial institutions aren't seeing it it’s not because the problem isn't there - it's a measurement problem. It’s not a victimless crime. There are clear links to international SOC groups, human trafficking and other crimes. 👉 Lots of hype about AI, but the conversation needs to start with the new insights it’s helping to generate, not with AI as a capability. "How many builders talk about their power tools?". 👉 It takes a network to fight a network. Arguably with AI it takes a network armed with AI to fight a network armed with AI. Huge thanks to our superb guest presenters: David Birch, Janine Hirt, Dr Sarah Walton, Mike Tuck, Lindsay Gustafsson, David Cheetham, Lord Holmes, Pete Tully, Hester Abrams, Brian Webb, Sharad Agarwal, Boris Diakonov, Tony Blake, to our audience and to the fabulous home team at LexisNexis Risk Solutions UK & IRL - Financial Services and Businesses who helped to make this happen.

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Confirmation that Experian UK's position has been generally upheld on appeal in the long-running debate between them and the ICO on their use of consumer data. This was an important test of how GDPR should be interpreted. The legislation is not intended to be used to prevent all forms of personalised marketing when this is critical for brands to succeed. The legislation is there to protect consumers from bona fide data malpractice and privacy breaches. The tribunal has drawn a distinction between types of data processing which may *sound scary* but actually don't harm individuals vs data processing that encroaches on people's freedoms. It's an encouraging step for our industry and shows that data businesses can innovate in the UK market without fear of being shut down on loose principle or sentiment, so long as they remain within the law.

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Ways to guarantee resolution for fraud victims: - Low-value loss - Insured loss - Public shaming  I complain about vague and misaligned definitions of fraud, but one area where the fuzziness helps is with victim restitution.  As long as everyone loosely agrees that "fraud is bad", calling a business out in the media (traditional or social) is sometimes the only way to provoke having a fraud situation resolved. As a merchant, I cringed as soon as someone tweeted the word "fraud" and tagged my company, but I couldn't argue with the fact that it produced results.  This is far from the ideal way to care for fraud victims, but for fraud where the victim is technically at fault there may not be any other options.  This BBC News coverage of a small island's only store falling victim to a phishing scam puts a very human face on the customer service conundrum. The Co-Operative Banking Group was probably correct when they previously denied the store's requests to be made whole, but the bank was also put in a position where holding their ground would have done a whole lot of reputational harm. The bigger issue is that at the end of the day there's still not an actual resolution path for the next small business that is socially engineered into giving up their bank details.  Rathlin's only shop avoids closure after £12k fraud https://lnkd.in/gZbP7ge5 #fraud #fraudarticle #fraudmanagement #fraudprevention #banking #customerservice #phishing #scamawareness 

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Late payment remains one of the biggest barriers for SMB growth. It is great to see the UK and EU making progress at legislating to force larger businesses to pay on time, and to penalise those businesses that intentionally pay their invoices late. However this is only part of the picture. The majority of delays in payment are unintended, due to invoices being lost, incorrectly entered into the buyer's accounting systems or poort approval workflows. Technical automation, based on e-invoicing, are globally demonstrated as removing most of these unintended late payment causes which is why I continue to be so active in promoting UK and wider e-invoice adoption #LatePayments #SmallBusiness #FairPaymentCode #BusinessGrowth #UKEconomy #SMESupport #CashFlow #BusinessReporting #FinancialReform #EntrepreneurshipUK #BusinessLegislation #PaymentPractices #SupplyChain #BusinessRegulation #EconomicGrowth #UKGovernment #BusinessPolicy #SMEProtection #CorporateResponsibility #FairBusinessPractices #BusinessStories #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #Innovation #SuccessStories #BusinessGrowth #BusinessStrategy #BusinessInsights

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Check out this post on the state of UK startup funding from Ian Merricks, FBCS FRSA. It offers great insight, highlighting the significant funding challenges at Series A and providing focused foresight on what’s truly at stake for the UK’s scaleups. It's well worth a read! #startups #scaleups #innovation #investment #funding

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Many corporates looking for modern rails to pay and get paid are reviewing how initiatives like Variable Recurring Payments (VRP) are progressing in the UK. Finding a strategic payments partner like #Bottomline is critical to navigate the industry changes and understand how they can benefit your organisation. Progress is being made with Variable Recurring Payments, and they're evaluating whether participation in the Phase 1 expansion should be mandated. The scope of this initiative is based on stakeholder feedback, and updates are coming soon. Stay tuned for more in the autumn! #PaymentSystemsRegulator #OpenBanking

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AI adoption doubles in UK banking sector https://buff.ly/47SRElp AI integration has seen a significant surge within the UK banking industry, with adoption rates doubling in recent times. This shift towards embracing artificial intelligence technologies is reshaping the way financial institutions operate, enhancing efficiency and customer service. For instance, AI-powered chatbots are being utilized to provide instant support to customers, improving overall user experience. According to recent data, AI implementation has resulted in a 30% reduction in customer service response times. This trend towards AI adoption in banking is expected to continue, driving further innovations in the sector. #AIinBanking #DigitalTransformation

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I’m looking forward later today to speaking on a panel at the UK Finance Digital Identity: Unlocking growth and innovation conference in London. I’ll be joined by industry experts Nick Mothershaw, Michael Forrest and Sarah Munro to discuss Select ID, which aims to be a market-leading Digital ID scheme and marketplace for financial services. We’ll discuss potential opportunities to help simplify customer journeys, reduce fraud, and provide secure and widely available verification and authentication services, while acknowledging the technical challenges and need for alignment within regulatory frameworks. https://bit.ly/4dC4sxB

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Not surprisingly, one of the top takeaways from the Gift Card & Voucher Association (GCVA) sales analysis and outlook (UK) for H2 2023 report, showed that digital gift card sales were growing year on year - however, perhaps more surprising was that physical gift cards still represent 53.9% of sales. So maybe the message is, don't just focus on your digital range of content? Blackhawk Network Europe have an extensive range of both digital and physical gift cards, let me know if we can help power your next campaign or reward, recognition and benefit platform? #b2b #giftcards #rewardandrecogntion #employeebenefits

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It will be really interesting to hear how the PM approaches this subject in his speech today. Ensuring #regulation doesn’t just ‘not get in the way’ of growth but actively supports it, is a challenge that needs more discussion. How could we get there - some immediate thoughts: 1️⃣ greater links between regulators to support cross-sectoral business models; 2️⃣ more consistent duties and the interpretation of competing duties across regulators; 3️⃣ a clear steer from government about the role of regulation in delivering national priorities; and 4️⃣ a strong link between those national priorities, policy making and regulatory action. Independent regulators are an important part of our regulatory architecture, they should also be an important part of the national #growth mission.

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💹 IPO frenzy 🏦 Quite surprised to see the over-subscription for IPOs - both Regular and SMEs alike. Getting 100x subscription would mean something! Out of the 48 IPOs that I could track since 1st April, approx 40 are in the SME category, and it is usual to see 100-400x of subscription. In fact HOAC Foods broke the 2000x barrier. Thanks to the very convenient subscription process by the investment Apps and the low requirement (sometimes as low as 5 Crore) for the SME companies, and the subscription easily exceeds the requirement in a buoyant equity market. Seems like IPOs are the next interesting thing for the retail market, second only to Derivatives (“Gamification of Indian Equities” report by Axis Mutual covers the 400x volumes of derivative products to cash trading in India). However, my surprise is mainly on very regular SME business with no product, technology, distribution advantage getting over-subscribed at high PEs. Some underlying businesses of these hugely successful IPOs are: 🌾 Packaged flour, grains, oils (not some organic or superior health play) 🥖 Emulsifiers for various industries (not any patented technology) 🔧 Very standard sheet metal components for auto industry (not some air charger or battery or drive components for EVs) 📣 Bill boards and kiosks marketing (not a hyperlocal targeted digital marketing) 💭 Cotton bales and yarn (not some D2C clothing brand for gen Z) 🖥 Trading of computers and hardware (not a high growth electronics D2C brand) These are safe businesses with history of stable earnings. However, with single digit EBITDAs and average growth prospects, the listing PEs look unreasonable. In contrast, Aerotyne International from the Wolf of Wall Street movie where some radar technology story (on paper) would be an even more dangerous bet 😄 Seems like the retail market is ready to bet 💸 , do you have the story 🕺? #ipo #smeipo #nse #bse #stockmarket #investments

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The UK Fraud Report for this year highlighted some good progress being made but some areas of fraud which aren't just proving stubborn to tackle for institutions, but are increasingly rapidly. In this blog post I highlight some thoughts about why some fraud typologies are resistant to existing fraud prevention techniques and whether there are new technologies that can contribute to solving these. https://lnkd.in/eQhfFy8E

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☕️ (CX)presso: A Shot of Customer Experience Insights For my latest (CX)presso post, there was one obvious person to approach whose thoughts represent the gold standard of customer experience for HSBC in the UK. Here’s how Chris Pitt, first direct’s CEO answered my three questions.  👉 Strategy: How much focus is there on CX in your organisation and to what level? ❝The customer is at the heart of first direct (fd) and pervades the whole organisation. They always have been. fd is 35 years old this year, and when it launched as the first ever remote telephone bank in the UK, customer service and experience needed to be exceptional to attract customers to a ‘new’ way of banking. The ‘guiding light’ for fd in 1989 was Pioneering Amazing Service and this remains the same today. There are many examples of how customer service is at the centre at all levels of fd. Here’s just a few: Proximity to customers - senior managers sit in the call centre operation in addition to listening to customer calls on a regular basis. We sort things out for customers and fd people: anybody in the business can raise an issue, this is then tackled by the Transformation Team.❞ 👉 Lessons: What are the CX learnings that have got you to where you are today? ❝The three learnings I would reference in my career are: -Empathy. Think like the customer – which is sometimes hard to do. But put yourself in their shoes, their circumstances. How would you feel if the same thing happened to you.  Never treat a customer like a statistic. Every customer impacted by a fraud, however small, has an emotional and financial story. Every time a process does not work 100% perfectly – this has a wider impact. - Active listening. Do not just respond to the customer request. Listen hard and actively to the real problem/issue that they are concerned about. How can we solve that bigger problem/issue? Equally, how can we make things even better for customers – go above and beyond – by thinking about the bigger picture for the customer. - No hierarchy. Teams work better if there is no ego involved. The leader needs to set the direction – but is not in control. People need to feel they can operate without fear. Within fd, there is a flat/minimal hierarchy structure and culture. This creates a sense of everybody being in this together, focused on creating better outcomes for customers and the people in fd.❞ 👉 Future: What role do you see CX playing in the future of your business? ❝In 1989, Pioneering Amazing Service was at the heart of fd. It still is today. The people of fd are rightly proud of the heritage of customer excellence, which has seen fd be the No. 1 Customer Service brand in the UK in 2 of the last 3 years (Institute of Customer Service) – so I see customer service continuing to play a crucial role in the future of first direct.❞ #CX #fd #HSBC

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