The rise of the Omicron variant has seen many large financial services firms postponing return to office plans. With remote and hybrid employees now the norm, the pandemic has already changed the way large financial services firms work.
What has this meant for conduct oversight?
During the webinar A Compliance Officer’s Crystal Ball – One Practitioner’s Predictions for 2021, Compliance Expert Mark A. Egert joined me for his take on what will be the most important compliance concerns of the upcoming year.
Mark also answered some excellent questions during the presentation, and there were a few more that we couldn’t get to because of time. I wanted to take a moment and recap of few of the questions and answers.
Remote work is a part of the current normal in the financial services industry, in the short term and maybe even longer. Arizent, the parent company of American Banker, PaymentsSource, The Bond Buyer and other titles, recently released a survey polling executives to understand how firms are planning the return to the workplace for their employees.
Even as some firms have begun the process of reopening offices, the survey shows that almost 6 out of 10 employers are uncertain about the timing of when employees return to the workplace, and more than half report reluctance from their employees around going back to an in-person work environment. The survey also highlighted that 48% of employees are very interested and 30% are somewhat interested in continuing to work from home. 70% of financial services and 80% of professional services firms polled are likely to allow their employees to continue to work from home if their position allows it.
As most employees are now working from home, without a doubt, compliance has become more challenging and regulators expect firms to be prepared to manage the risks and challenges promptly. Compliance Week has run a survey to understand how prepared were compliance professionals and organizations for the COVID-19 pandemic.
On April 7 the SEC published two Risk Alerts providing broker-dealers and investment advisors with information on the expected scope of initial Regulation Best Interest enforcement. The guidance indicated that initial exams will focus on evidence that firms have made “good faith” efforts to comply.
