SMCR Compliance Optimization

Enhancing and optimizing your SMCR management processes

The Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR)is a management framework for UK-based financial institutions, meant to ensure they have the management processes and culture in place to meet the expectations of their regulators.

Established in 2018, it stresses individual accountability to ensure that the regulatory requirements and expectations of an institution are fully met.

Using automation to deliver efficient and effective SMCR compliance

The focus on individual conduct under SMCR means that those individuals need to have visibility of business processes, and confidence in the relevant metrics to make decisions and commitments with certainty. In response, organizations have enhanced their core systems and processes, to ensure errors and omissions do not trigger issues under SMCR.

The compliance workload has increased across the board to meet the demands of SMCR, and the other regulations that underpin it. The need for enhanced transparency has exposed an array of inefficient, and error-prone manual compliance processes.  It’s also revealed how uncontrolled End User Computing (EUCs) applications – typically spreadsheets – are prevalent within core elements of reporting and compliance processes, as well as key business operations.

The goal and the challenge

With SMCR already in place, regulators and management alike have expectations for the systems and processes involved.   The goal?  Streamline the workload and control the cost of compliance, while making the whole process part of ‘business as usual’.

The challenge? There was huge emphasis on complying with SMCR by its 2018 deadline, but a ‘good enough’ approach may ensure compliance but still makes a firm vulnerable to processes that are costly, inefficient, and error-prone. The challenge now?  To reduce costs and workloads, yet ensure that any EUC-based business processes are also seamlessly integrated into a compliance framework.

End User Computing (EUC) applications also are a major challenge for financial institutions, as uncontrolled spreadsheets are widely used in key areas covered by SMCR, including portfolio management, product development, modeling, and business management.  Spreadsheets may also form part of the “final mile” reporting for SMCR, so undetected errors, omissions and flawed calculations can expose an institution to operational, commercial, reputational, and regulatory risk.

The optimal approach for redressing these shortcomings?   Leverage automation using flexible solutions that can deliver effective compliance management and policy management and enforcement, plus comprehensive EUC management. This ensures SMCR compliance can be enhanced without disrupting an organization’s existing systems and processes.

Solutions

For SMCR compliance, you need to meet your needs comprehensively and efficiently with proven, peer-tested solutions that streamline compliance processes and cut costs.