Financial services firms face an elevated risk of conflicts of interest, largely due to the influence, access, and relationships that come with the territory. It is important to note that a conflict does not always mean misconduct has occurred. Rather, it means a situation has arisen where competing interests could compromise objective decision-making. It also has the potential for clients to receive unwarranted special treatment and unfair advantages, and a degradation of market integrity.
Why are employee conflicts of interest of particular concern to financial firms? Regulators in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region and around the globe expect firms to identify, assess, mitigate, and evidence how they manage conflicts of interest. Firms generally implement specific policies, pre-clearance and approval workflows to address these compliance risks. However, regular attestations, ongoing monitoring, and a defensible audit trail that shows decisions and actions.
This article explains what constitutes an employee conflict of interest, the different ways conflicts can occur, what can happen when a conflict arises, and how firms can monitor and manage conflicts so they do not escalate into larger issues.
An employee conflict of interest in financial services arises when the personal interests, relationships, or outside activities of employees, executives, and directors could improperly influence, or appear to influence, how they perform their duties and meet their loyalties and obligations to the firm or its clients. The conflict exists when the employee stands to gain a personal benefit or unfair advantage that competes with the firm’s regulatory obligations to act fairly and uphold the integrity of financial markets.
‘Interests’ are often financial in nature. For example, an individual may hold a financial interest in the firm that employs them, in an asset they invest in, or in benefits they receive from a third party. Interests can also be personal, family, professional, business, and political.
Employee conflicts of interest usually fall into one of three categories:
An actual conflict of interest: an employee or director’s private interests currently conflict with their professional duties.
Example: an employee receives material non-public information (MNPI) about an acquisition by their firm that will increase its stock price. They then trade in the firm’s securities before the information becomes public.
A potential conflict of interest: it is foreseeable that private interests could come into conflict with professional duties.
Example: a firm’s relationship manager has a close personal relationship with a senior executive at a corporate client. There is the potential for that connection to influence credit decisions, pricing, fee negotiations, or onboarding decisions, or create pressure to apply exceptions to standard controls.
A perceived conflict of interest: a third party could reasonably believe private interests could influence professional duties, even if no influence occurs in practice.
Example: An employee accepts a gift from a client shortly before a key decision, such as a mandate renewal, fee negotiation, or product selection process. Even if the gift does not influence the employee’s judgement, a reasonable third party could conclude the gift could sway the decision, creating a perceived conflict that the firm should disclose, assess, and manage under its gifts and hospitality rules.
While the broad definition of a conflict of interest is closely aligned internationally, regulatory expectations in managing those conflicts can vary by jurisdiction, particularly throughout the APAC region. Firms should take proactive measures to understand the regulatory requirements for each location in which they operate, including where obligations apply extraterritorially.
Financial services firms encounter conflicts of interest because employees, executives, and directors often must juggle sensitive information, client outcomes, and commercial incentives. These overlaps can create conflicts that emerge quickly, sometimes without the individuals involved recognising the risk until after the fact.
In practice, conflicts can also arise through gaps in education, oversight, and accountability. A policy can set out the guardrails to which employees need to adhere. However, firms still need manageable day-to-day systems, processes, monitoring, and controls to effectively surface actual, potential, and perceived conflicts.
When defining these systems, processes, and policies, firms should carefully consider and prioritise a wide range of conflicts of interest risk areas. These risks can exist in isolation and overlap, such as:
Employee conflicts of interest often appear across several areas. To manage these overlapping risks effectively, financial firms need oversight across multiple areas of the business. With the right systems in place, firms can then identify issues that may overlap, for example, where MNPI access and increased personal trading activity may suggest increased risk.
When an employee conflict of interest occurs, it can put both the individual and the firm at risk of reputational harm, sales and financial losses, and regulatory enforcement action.
When whistleblowers, reporters, or third parties make public comments about a conflict of interest that has arisen, a firm’s public perception can rapidly become tainted. In line with those perceptions, firms can then experience declines in sales and client contracts. Even when a firm has taken measures in line with regulatory requirements, the narrative of publicised cases can still erode trust and harm client and partner relationships.
Where a conflict breaches legal or regulatory requirements, regulators can impose penalties that include fines, bans, licence conditions, remediation programmes, and mandated control improvements. Additionally, firms incur the operational cost of investigations, independent reviews, and heightened supervision.
Regulators in APAC, such as the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) provide sound guidance on how firms should manage conflicts of interest risk. In ASIC’s RG 181 Guidance, the regulator suggests the following four-step framework:
Many regulators now expect an objective, common-sense approach to deciding whether a conflict exists. To support this approach, firms need oversight and clarity across various risk areas to understand where there is a real and reasonable possibility of swaying the judgement or actions of employees, directors, or agents in an adverse way.
As MyComplianceOffice (MCO) has seen first-hand, financial firms are increasingly investing in regulatory technology (RegTech) to enhance their oversight, automate identification of risks that matter, create a defensible explanation of why they matter, and link each conflict to internal controls, disclosure, or mitigation policies and processes.
For financial firms, it is not a question around if employee conflicts of interest will occur, but when. Strong programmes assume the reality of this risk and focus on systems that improve the speed of identification, create thoughtful assessment, respond appropriately to manage the conflict, and implement training, accountability, and disciplinary measures.
As part of a well-structured employee conflicts of interest programme, the following steps should be considered:
Write and maintain an Employee Conflicts of Interest Policy aligned to applicable regulation.
Define what constitutes a conflict, who must disclose, when disclosures must occur, and how the firm will assess and respond. Make the policy specific. Set thresholds for gifts and hospitality, define pre-clearance requirements, document consequences, and assign clear ownership for review and sign-off. Use a consistent risk approach so teams apply the same standard across business units and jurisdictions.
Train and educate staff regularly, supported with clear accountability.
Training should go beyond awareness. Show staff how to disclose conflicts, what happens after disclosure, and what ‘good’ decision-making looks like in practice. Reinforce expectations with recent case studies relevant to your region and products and targeted refreshers during higher-risk periods, such as trading blackout periods and gift-giving seasons.
Implement controls and technology that surface conflicts early and evidence outcomes.
Firms need controlled workflows that capture disclosures, route approvals to the right people, and record decisions. Prioritise technology that supports:
MyComplianceOffice (MCO) supports a structured approach to managing employee conflicts of interest by bringing disclosures, approvals, monitoring, and reporting into one compliance workflow. Firms can use MCO to capture and manage key conflict types such as gifts, entertainment, and hospitality, outside business activities, personal account dealing, MNPI and insider lists, and related attestations.
A centralised platform helps compliance teams reduce reliance on spreadsheets and disconnected processes, maintain consistent controls across jurisdictions, and produce audit-ready records that demonstrate decisions and follow-up actions. It also helps firms identify patterns and repeat issues earlier, so compliance teams can intervene before a conflict becomes a larger conduct or enforcement issue.
Additionally, consider the role of regulatory technology (RegTech) solutions, which help firms more efficiently and effectively monitor and enforce workflows, capture and log approvals, and maintain robust audit trails.
A centralised RegTech platform removes compliance teams’ reliance on spreadsheets and disconnected processes. It replaces that reliance with real-time visibility into risk across all aspects of employee conflicts of interest, consistent controls across jurisdictions, and audit-ready records that demonstrate identification, assessment, and response to conflicts and the implementation of actions to further mitigate conflicts.
Every financial firm, regardless of size or strategy, deserves the technology to protect itself (and its employees) from financial and reputational harm and uphold regulatory expectations.
MyComplianceOffice (MCO) exists to help financial institutions:
In practical terms, MCO assists firms in:
Consider your firm’s need for a comprehensive, automated compliance solution with full audit trails to build a more responsive, risk-informed compliance framework across all aspects of employee conduct and conflict-of-interest management.