Digital Media & Financial Promotions 2024

Tuesday 4th June, 2024

Delivered Virtually, Zoom

Attendee Fees: Non-members: £535 (VAT Exempt), Members: £385 (VAT Exempt)

Time: 09:30 - 16:30

Duration: 7 hours

COURSE DETAILS

Total duration: 6 hours (full day) | 9.30 -12.30 , resuming 13.30 -16.30

Digital media channels and distribution methods are fast becoming critical for most regulated firms, especially those dealing in consumer markets. With their rapid and potentially indiscriminate dissemination, digital media are very different from traditional marketing media and the FCA Rules are “media neutral” so this requires careful consideration to ensure that their use is compliant, and how the firm’s Consumer Duty compliance can be affected by them.

At the same time, digital media, digital marketing, outsourced digital marketing and the increasing awareness of privacy issues mean that marketing activity now creates additional risks around privacy/data protection, while digital distribution opens up new cyber security risks and coding and development risk easily missed errors that could have significant reputational and regulatory consequences for firms.

This course starts with a thorough grounding in the meaning of key terms such as “financial promotion” and “communication” and an exploration of how the FCA views the marketing process through the Guidance in PERG so delegates can understand the practical impact on their work. Then it explores the types and nature of social media and digital distribution and the implications when the FCA’s rules are applied to them.

The course then tackles the impact this has on governance of distribution, the PROD Handbook and the SMCR. Finally, the course broadens out to examine the broader risks adopting digital distribution entails which marketing digitally could create, including privacy, data protection and cyber issues, along with helpful hints on how to mitigate such risks.

Course Overview

Revisit in detail the key concepts, including “communication” and “financial promotion” and the current FCA guidance around these concepts
The impact of these definitions on the overall marketing process
The application of the Rules to social media of all types, illustrated by multiple examples
Record-keeping implications
Risk assessment and controls
Impact of the senior managers and certification regime/process governance
The impact of outsourcing your social media management and other functions
The links to Product Development, coding, data protection/privacy and cyber security
Identifying your skills gaps and how to plug them

Agenda

Introduction
Key concepts: “communication”, “financial promotion”
The FCA’s Guidance (PERG)
The application of the marketing rules to digital media
Implications for controls and record keeping
The SMCR and the role of Compliance
Risk assessment
The bigger picture: outsourcing, data protection, cyber security
Skills gaps and how to plug them

Trainer

The session will be delivered by Gary Pitts.

Gary has been a compliance professional for over 30 years, having started his career at Lautro and the Personal Investment Authority and including spells at Threadneedle, Henderson (managing the N2 transition), Head of Compliance at hedge fund Brevan Howard and Head of Compliance Europe, Mid-East, Africa and Japan for a boutique investment bank. Since 2013 he has run his own regulatory and training consultancy, Tetractys, with operations in the UK and Ireland. Tetractys focuses the importance of governance as the essential driver of good compliance outcomes. He delivers open and bespoke training courses and external Board effectiveness assessments alongside his consulting work. Gary has a particular interest in cyber security governance and the impact of digitisation and artificial intelligence on compliance and business processes.

Gary has held FCA controlled/senior manager functions in FSA/FCA regulated firms since 2001, has been a director of regulated companies in the UK and South Africa and is also has been a Central Bank regulated person in Ireland, as well as being a compliance officer for National Futures Association and SEC registered firms in the US. Gary is a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership, Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and holds an MBA from the Open University Business School and Masters degrees from Oxford and London Universities. He is a practising expert witness working towards Certified Expert Witness status. He sits on the regulatory advisory board of the Journal of Securities Operations has also held a number of charity trusteeships.