The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has finalised its revision of competency requirements for representatives conducting regulated activities under the Financial Advisers Act 2001 (FAA) and the Securities and Futures Act 2001 (SFA).
MAS has now published its finalised response that addresses questions and feedback given concerning the 2020 Consultation Paper.
Finalised revisions will replace the current FAA Notice and SFA Notice and come into effect on 01 April 2024.
Risk management is a continuous process rather than a linear one. A pragmatic Know Your Obligations (KYO) strategy starts with building an ongoing monitoring approach by deconstructing regulatory obligations and then measuring the performance of related procedures and controls to assure compliance. The final step is to evidence that compliance.
This is a critical part of the process because, as far regulators are concerned, without that supporting documentation, it’s like it didn’t happen.
Employees at all levels of the organization make decisions that impact compliance every single day. To ensure that those decisions are wise ones, employees need to understand where they fit into the organization. If there's not a shared understanding of roles and responsibilities supported by controls and accountability there's a risk of chaotic compliance—and a chaotic culture across the firm.
Legislation has passed both Houses of the Australian Parliament to introduce the Financial Accountability Regime (FAR).
The 2023 Bill establishes a financial accountability regime to impose obligations on directors and senior executives of financial entities in the banking, insurance and superannuation industries. These obligations will cover accountability, key personnel, deferred remuneration and notification to Regulators (meaning APRA and ASIC collectively, or only APRA where it is the sole Regulator).
If the first stage of a pragmatic Know Your Obligations strategy is deconstructing and understanding compliance obligations to define where you need to keep your focus, the next step is mapping policies, procedures and controls to performance indicators to be able to accurately assure compliance.
Essentially, at this stage, we need to answer the question: What do we actually need to monitor?
