ΠΕΡΙΓΡΑΦΗ

The EIMF Live Online Learning Experience

EIMF subject-matter experts deliver engaging and interactive courses across a broad spectrum of areas, that can be enjoyed in the comfort of your own chosen environment. 

Course Overview

Everyone wants to know how to put their product or service out in front of future customers in a multi-channel world. It is also a world where the European Securities and Markets Authority and CySEC have already intervened in a significant way to dictate the forms of marketing allowed in the Contracts for Differences market. Marketing regulation is not confined to financial services regulators. The Cyprus Advertising Regulatory Organization (CARO) has its own rules. All of these regimes are modelled around the “fair, clear and not misleading” found in MiFID 2.

Product governance is probably the most important new subject area for financial services professionals in the EU. It finally entered the regulatory vocabulary at European level with the implementation of MiFID 2, closely followed by that of the Insurance Distribution Directive’s own provisions on the subject. ESMA has already intervened in the marketing and promotion to retail customers of binary options and contracts for differences and Cyprus has responded to the ending of the ESMA measures by implementing its own intervention in September 2019.

Much of the focus of MiFID 2, the Insurance Distribution Directive and other modern regulation is on the fair treatment of customers. The handling of complaints marks out financial institutions as being concerned about their customers and keen to improve their own standards generally. MiFID 2 was the first general EU financial services directive to take the subject seriously and lay down, through its MiFID Org Regulations, some Europe-wide complaint rules. Now, the ESMA/EBA guidelines apply to Cyprus complaint handling well beyond banking and the EIOPA guidelines deal with insurance cases.

The trainer, Adam Samuel is a UK-based complaints and compliance expert who has handled complaints for firms, consumers and briefly as an Ombudsman. He is the author of the only book on UK financial services complaint handling now in its second edition. He brings to our courses his experience and knowledge of the UK and the subject-area generally as well as an unquenchable enthusiasm for learning how the rest of Europe and in particular Cyprus handles things. He brings to every course a string of practical examples and welcomes people bringing along their case studies and examples.

ΣΚΟΠΟΣ ΣΕΜΙΝΑΡΙΟΥ

• Understand the key MiFID and MiFID-related provisions on financial promotions and appropriateness testing
• Read promotions and spot their strengths and weaknesses
• Apply the concepts of standalone compliance and regulatory media neutrality
• Apply “fair, clear and not misleading” to a variety of different media
• Identify the types of promotion that carry the lowest compliance risk
• Understand the basics of risk management in relation to promotions and digital media
• Know when they have to carry out appropriateness testing
• Understand the appropriateness testing conditions required
• Know what to do with the results of the appropriateness testing
• Understand the key MiFID and MiFID-related provisions on product governance
• Appreciate the goals of product governance and the risks of not achieving them
• Identify strengths and weaknesses in product governance structures
• Identify the positive and negative target markets of investment products and services
• Piece together the key elements in designing a product or service
• Determine the types of distribution that would not be suitable for certain types of products
• Gather key management information about the success or otherwise of the governance process
• Apply treating customers fairly notions to their business
• Apply the MiFID Org Regulation provisions to complaints
• Build and implement the basics of a complaints procedure and policy
• Understand the complaints process from advance disclosure of the process to the closure of the case
• Appreciate some of the root cause analysis techniques and their weaknesses
• Reach fair results in relation to their products and services and complaints about them
• Deal with a case at the Financial Ombudsman

ΣΕ ΠΟΙΟΥΣ ΑΠΕΥΘΥΝΕΤΑΙ

• Complaint handlers
• Compliance Officers and staff
• Customer relations and customer service staff
• Lawyers
• Risk managers

ΠΕΡΙΣΣΟΤΕΡΕΣ ΠΛΗΡΟΦΟΡΙΕΣ

Training Outline

Financial promotions – digital to billboards

• MiFID and CARO code
• What is a promotion?
• Image advertising and other promotional activity outside MiFID
• Fair, clear and not misleading
• Risks and their description
• CYSEC CfD compulsory warnings
• Unfair comparisons
• Past, future and simulated performance
• Digital media elements – social media, pay-per-click and websites

Appropriateness Testing

• When
• What do you test?
• How do you test?
• How do you assess the results?
• Risk warnings and their impact on whether you accept the client

Product governance under MiFID

• Defining manufacturer and distributor
• National product intervention powers
• The product governance arrangements
• The “product governance committee”
• Role of compliance and the Board
• Core principles – conflicts of interest, join-ventures
• Tasks
• Target market – manufacturer’s and distributor’s roles
• Product design
• Product testing
• Selecting distribution
• Providing information to distributors – distributors obtaining it
• Monitoring distribution
• Reviews and ongoing monitoring

The idea of TCF

Setting up expectations

• Attracting customers (promotions rules introduced)
• Describing the firm, product and service

Meeting expectations and a product or service of reasonable quality

• Advice, fact-finding, suitability
• Best execution
• Introduction to product governance

Complaints

• Elements of the procedure and policy
• The complaints management function
• Advance disclosure of how to complain
• Identification, recording and acknowledging
• Investigation
• Assessment and final response
• Financial Ombudsman
• Root cause analysis

Training Style

The training style is interactive involving a combination of discussions and presentation, group work and case studies (taken from real-live examples). Participants are encouraged to share their opinions from their different perspectives.

CPD Recognition

This programme may be approved for up to 15 CPD units in Financial Regulation. Eligibility criteria and CPD Units are verified directly by your association, regulator or other bodies which you hold membership.

Trainer

Adam Samuel

Adam Samuel is a lawyer qualified in the UK and the USA. Since 1996, Adam has run his own training and consulting business, helping out regulators in three continents on customer-facing issues. He has the qualifications required of a financial, mortgage and equity release adviser and the UK CISI compliance diploma. Adam wrote the only book on consumer financial services complaint handling in the UK and a guide to the SFC Code for Intermediaries in Hong Kong. The Gibraltar Supreme Court followed his expert evidence in van Geens v. Jyske Bank on product risk, compliance and advice standards around the world. Adam has broadcast on a number of BBC domestic and World Service programmes, including the national news, on financial services compliance and banking issues.