When standards are absent in financial services, people soon notice. In an increasingly uncertain economic and regulatory environment, expertise and detail really do matter.

Standards can provide assurance and embed systems, processes, and values to help protect the business and its customers. Standards are always in progress, living documents that are complex and interdependent. They help financial businesses raise service levels, improve risk management and meet regulatory requirements.

By positioning their services and business practices in relation to a common standard, firms grow the total size of the market and can focus their innovation efforts in areas where they have a comparative advantage. 

Key Standardized Areas in the Financial Services Sector

Compliance

For regulated firms, the significance of effective compliance management has been emphasized by major regulatory breaches in recent years that have occurred on a global scale relating to wholesale, retail, and investment markets. Rogue trading, insider dealing, miss-selling, and failures in Anti-Money Laundering procedures can have major impacts on firms, their customers, investors, and shareholders. Consequentially, firms are seeking to improve their internal systems and controls through additional investment.

In 2011 BSI published a British Standard, BS 8453 Compliance framework for regulated financial services firms, developed by industry experts and compliance practitioners to help establish, manage and maintain an effective compliance function. BS 8453 takes a risk-based approach to manage compliance through the implementation of an effective compliance framework. The compliance department needs the support of senior management to prevent regulatory breaches and be truly effective.

To learn more about how standard BS 8453 can help your organization, download our free guide to Compliance Management.

BS EN ISO 37301, published in 2021, is about implementing an ongoing compliance management system and obtaining a better understanding of good compliance. It specifies requirements and provides guidelines for establishing, developing, implementing, evaluating, maintaining, and improving an effective compliance management system within an organization.

Information Security Management

Financial institutions are increasingly being targeted by criminal gangs attempting to infect machines and steal login details. The regulator has come down heavily on financial institutions that have lost data, imposing fines of upwards of £3 million. With the proliferation of data breaches and malicious attacks, organizations need to employ the most proficient and best-in-class cybersecurity strategy available.

Standard BS EN ISO/IEC 27001 can help. It takes a risk-based approach to help financial institutions plan and implement an information security management system, which delivers an appropriate and affordable level of organizational security.

Risk Management

Organizations that manage risks effectively are more likely to protect themselves and succeed in growing their business. The challenge for any business is to integrate good practice into their day-to-day operations and apply it to the wider aspects of their organizational practice.

BS 31100:2011 provides practical and specific recommendations on how to implement the key principles of effective risk management as specified in BS 31100:2011. It is a code of practice that offers guidance to help senior management’s strategic understanding of risk and support decision making that ensures best practice.  

It provides practical and specific recommendations on how to implement key principles of a defined risk management process, which can be tailored to different types of businesses and to varying groups within an organization, helping to increase consistency and improve communication.

Anti-Bribery 

Bribery undermines democracy and the rule of law and poses serious threats to sustained economic progress in developed and emerging economies and to the proper operation of free markets more generally.  

As there is an increasing focus on bribery, business reputation, sustainability and growth are at stake.  The effects of bribery are felt globally, and acts of bribery incur significant criminal sanctions.

A BS ISO 37001 anti-bribery management system (ABMS) can provide your organization with an international best-practice framework for prohibiting, preventing, detecting, and reporting bribery. Designed to be integrated into your organization's existing management processes and controls, BS ISO 37001 also follows the common ISO structure for management system standards, for easy integration with BS EN ISO 9001, BS EN ISO/IEC 27001, and BS EN ISO 14001 for example.

Sustainable Finance

Finance plays a central role in society, providing services to investors, borrowers, and lenders to ensure proper risk management and efficient allocation of capital. Now, by aligning with climate goals, it could also help to deliver new jobs, mitigate climate change, improve public health, enhance monetary resilience, and more.

PAS 7341 covers the policies and processes needed to create and embed a responsible investment management approach. These can support an organization’s transition over time towards sustainable investment management.

The PAS underlines the importance of effective disclosure to appropriate stakeholders and builds on existing industry guidance, principles, and regulatory developments in sustainable finance.

Discover more about sustainable finance with our article How Standards Can Make Sustainable Finance Mainstream.

Collaborative Business Relationship Management

With increasing consolidation and competition in the industry, the financial services sector can benefit from building better collaborative business relationships with partners, suppliers, and clients. Improvements in collaboration are a major contribution to higher efficiency and productivity. 

BS ISO 44001 has evolved into an international standard to help organizations, large and small in both public and private sectors, to build and develop effective competitive business relationships based upon a collaborative approach. It provides a framework to help organizations build effective partnerships that deliver value internally and to customers.

Personal Financial Planning

With retail markets changing, BS ISO 22222 sets a benchmark for personal financial planners. It gives them a badge of professional competence and offers consumers confidence that a financial plan will be tailored to their needs. For financial advisors and planners, BS 8577 creates an operational management framework designed to ensure policies and procedures support a customer-oriented approach.

Start your organization’s standardization journey today by adding all the key Financial Services standards to your collection.

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