Law firm urges wealth advisers to be ready for SMCR

December this year sees the FCA extending the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR) to all ‘solo-regulated firms’, which will include wealth managers and financial advisers. 

Partners at Fox Williams, Joanna Chatterton and Peter Wright warn that the preparation required should not be underestimated and firms are advised to begin putting the new structures in place now. 

Chatterton (pictured) explains that the SMCR is the FSA, as it was then, response to the banking crisis.

“They realised that they couldn’t bring to account senior people in organisations who said: ‘It wasn’t me – I delegated it’,” she says. “It became that you weren’t able to bring people to account and they were the ones who earning lots of money and supposed to be running things.”

So, this piece of legislation was designed to place accountability on a small number of people in financial institutions.