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Bird's eye view of two colleagues sitting in red chairs
Bird's eye view of two colleagues sitting in red chairs

Corporate purpose and culture

Embed better business behaviours and unlock the potential of your employees.

Embedding the right culture and conduct in the workplace is key to meeting the demands around risk, compliance and governance. However, the culture and conduct challenges people in your organisation face do not always have an obvious right or wrong answer.

Our insight helps build strength and integrity into your culture, and our aim is to turn change into a competitive advantage and reduce business risk. 

We offer our bespoke services to a variety of global clients including banks, asset managers, fintechs and scale-ups, and other major corporates.

Our solution to your challenge will be innovative, practical, and sustainable.

Our core offering:

Conduct

Conduct risk analysis and review

Managing conduct and risk and ensuring your firm stays within its conduct risk appetite is an integral part of maintaining the overall health of a firm's culture.

Read more Conduct risk analysis and review
Read more Conduct risk analysis and review

Moreover, conduct risks are particularly heightened in a remote working environment and conduct risk management will therefore require special focus and attention to minimise any risk of reputational or operational damage. 

We have extensive experience assessing and managing conduct risk in firms and can review your current risk landscape to evaluate your overall conduct risk, map out key areas of reporting, identify potential gaps and key themes emerging and provide bespoke best practice recommendations to address any issues.

5 conduct questions report

The FCA's 5 Conduct Questions Programme was introduced in 2015 as part of the FCA's strategy for supervising wholesale banks.

Read more 5 conduct questions report
Read more 5 conduct questions report

However, the FCA notes that the questions are applicable more widely across all financial sectors as the questions are also incorporated into the FCA's approach to supervision generally. 

These 5 questions (along with the 8 additional questions introduced in 2018/19) form part of the FCA's conduct supervision approach and the FCA expects boards and executive management to investigate these questions in their firms. As such, we have extensive experience in helping firms respond to regulatory information requests regarding the 5 conduct questions, providing insights on peer firms' approach to their conduct and culture programmes and providing practical considerations for firms to support their thinking on this, based on our interactions with clients and regulators.

Conduct and culture dashboard

We have extensive experience of designing and implementing culture and conduct dashboards.

Read more Conduct and culture dashboard
Read more Conduct and culture dashboard

We can provide advice on how to measure culture, along with best practice guidance on the design and implementation of a consolidated culture and conduct Management Information (MI) dashboard. Developing a full view of both quantitative and qualitative MI, and collating, evaluating, reviewing and responding in a proportionate and sustainable way, can lead to meaningful culture change and ongoing focus on culture. 

We can work with you to develop a conduct and culture dashboard that consolidates quantitative MI with a qualitative overlay, into a single reporting format, that allows senior leaders to better understand the culture of the organisation and more accurately address any concerns through proportionate action plans.

Moreover, conduct risks are particularly heightened in a remote working environment and conduct risk management will therefore require special focus and attention to minimise any risk of reputational or operational damage. 

We have extensive experience assessing and managing conduct risk in firms and can review your current risk landscape to evaluate your overall conduct risk, map out key areas of reporting, identify potential gaps and key themes emerging and provide bespoke best practice recommendations to address any issues.

However, the FCA notes that the questions are applicable more widely across all financial sectors as the questions are also incorporated into the FCA's approach to supervision generally. 

These 5 questions (along with the 8 additional questions introduced in 2018/19) form part of the FCA's conduct supervision approach and the FCA expects boards and executive management to investigate these questions in their firms. As such, we have extensive experience in helping firms respond to regulatory information requests regarding the 5 conduct questions, providing insights on peer firms' approach to their conduct and culture programmes and providing practical considerations for firms to support their thinking on this, based on our interactions with clients and regulators.

We can provide advice on how to measure culture, along with best practice guidance on the design and implementation of a consolidated culture and conduct Management Information (MI) dashboard. Developing a full view of both quantitative and qualitative MI, and collating, evaluating, reviewing and responding in a proportionate and sustainable way, can lead to meaningful culture change and ongoing focus on culture. 

We can work with you to develop a conduct and culture dashboard that consolidates quantitative MI with a qualitative overlay, into a single reporting format, that allows senior leaders to better understand the culture of the organisation and more accurately address any concerns through proportionate action plans.

Purpose, value, design and training

Purpose, values and codes of conduct

A firm's purpose, values and code of conduct are central to its culture.

Read more Purpose, values and codes of conduct
Read more Purpose, values and codes of conduct

IT is crucial that a firm not only has clearly documented and widely communicated purpose and values statements and codes of conduct, but these messages need to effectively and meaningfully translate to specific roles and responsibilities, targets and objectives at an individual and unit level across the firm. 

We can work with you to design and review your purpose and values statement and code of conduct to ensure that these align with your risk appetite, are sufficiently brought to life for employees across the firm and provide a sustainable, proportionate and pragmatic framework to guide and influence employee behaviours.

Scenario based training

We are able to design and lead scenario based employee training sessions using experienced facilitators.

Read more Scenario based training
Read more Scenario based training

Our scenarios go beyond market conduct and business conduct scenarios, they cover topics such as diversity and inclusion, micro aggressions, harassment and speaking up, to help bring company values to life and encourage interactive discussion. We have extensive experience in delivering large scale culture training programmes. Within the core team we have run over 200 training sessions across a number of sectors.

Our experience has shown that participants are able to recall key themes and guidance from scenarios better than lists of dos and don'ts.  Scenario based training acts as dress rehearsals for real situations that they may face, helping them make the right decisions. We can create a safe environment for employees to 'fail' and learn, and allow employees to raise queries in the moment.

Senior manager training

We have extensive experience in training senior managers, Boards and ExCos across a number of topics including culture and conduct.

Read more Senior manager training
Read more Senior manager training

Training will typically include practical guidance on how to help Senior Leadership role model appropriate behaviours, establishing the right "tone from the top", promote inclusivity and openness and understand regulatory priorities - including culture and conduct responsibilities under the Senior Manager Regime and advice on the FCA's 5 conduct questions.

We can help ensure senior leadership are able to recognise and manage cultural themes within their own teams. We understand the expectations and nuances of senior management and can help baseline leadership culture relative to the values of the firm.

IT is crucial that a firm not only has clearly documented and widely communicated purpose and values statements and codes of conduct, but these messages need to effectively and meaningfully translate to specific roles and responsibilities, targets and objectives at an individual and unit level across the firm. 

We can work with you to design and review your purpose and values statement and code of conduct to ensure that these align with your risk appetite, are sufficiently brought to life for employees across the firm and provide a sustainable, proportionate and pragmatic framework to guide and influence employee behaviours.

Our scenarios go beyond market conduct and business conduct scenarios, they cover topics such as diversity and inclusion, micro aggressions, harassment and speaking up, to help bring company values to life and encourage interactive discussion. We have extensive experience in delivering large scale culture training programmes. Within the core team we have run over 200 training sessions across a number of sectors.

Our experience has shown that participants are able to recall key themes and guidance from scenarios better than lists of dos and don'ts.  Scenario based training acts as dress rehearsals for real situations that they may face, helping them make the right decisions. We can create a safe environment for employees to 'fail' and learn, and allow employees to raise queries in the moment.

Training will typically include practical guidance on how to help Senior Leadership role model appropriate behaviours, establishing the right "tone from the top", promote inclusivity and openness and understand regulatory priorities - including culture and conduct responsibilities under the Senior Manager Regime and advice on the FCA's 5 conduct questions.

We can help ensure senior leadership are able to recognise and manage cultural themes within their own teams. We understand the expectations and nuances of senior management and can help baseline leadership culture relative to the values of the firm.

Culture

Culture health assessment

A culture health assessment is designed to provide a view of a firm's culture, both in terms of areas where culture is strong and areas where culture could be improved.

Read more Culture health assessment
Read more Culture health assessment

It can be focused on one business area, one jurisdiction, one employee grade or as a comprehensive exercise done on a sample basis across the whole organisation.

This enables us to provide relevant, practical and actionable recommendations for follow up actions e.g. where a firm's in-practice culture may not be meeting its stated values or broader regulatory expectations. Importantly, such recommendations are made with a view to improvements being proportionate and sustainable, providing firms with a framework for ongoing focus on culture that develops as appropriate in line with - and importantly not behind - any emerging trends or new circumstances. Having conducted a number of health assessments we can draw on peer insights to build tailored recommendations for improving areas that have been prioritised by you.

Culture framework

A strong culture framework is essential for strong culture.

Read more Culture framework
Read more Culture framework

This provides firms with a framework for ongoing focus on culture that develops as appropriate in line with - and importantly not behind - any emerging trends or new circumstances. 

We have extensive experience in helping firm's design culture frameworks or enhance their existing frameworks so that they have a clear organisational culture and a refreshing culture strategy.

It can be focused on one business area, one jurisdiction, one employee grade or as a comprehensive exercise done on a sample basis across the whole organisation.

This enables us to provide relevant, practical and actionable recommendations for follow up actions e.g. where a firm's in-practice culture may not be meeting its stated values or broader regulatory expectations. Importantly, such recommendations are made with a view to improvements being proportionate and sustainable, providing firms with a framework for ongoing focus on culture that develops as appropriate in line with - and importantly not behind - any emerging trends or new circumstances. Having conducted a number of health assessments we can draw on peer insights to build tailored recommendations for improving areas that have been prioritised by you.

This provides firms with a framework for ongoing focus on culture that develops as appropriate in line with - and importantly not behind - any emerging trends or new circumstances. 

We have extensive experience in helping firm's design culture frameworks or enhance their existing frameworks so that they have a clear organisational culture and a refreshing culture strategy.