Compliance. In financial services. You could be forgiven for thinking that it doesn’t sound like the most thrilling career in the world. But you just might be surprised!
Compliance is a vital role within the industry and, put simply, it helps companies comply with government regulations across all business activity – providing them with plans and processes to ensure they’re meeting these requirements and keeping them up to date with any changes. A big part of their job is also digesting any new government regulations and finding ways to help companies easily understand what is required of them and help implement it – which is a real skill! It’s perhaps no wonder, that we often see people with backgrounds or interests in law and foreign languages as forensic levels of attention to detail is a must, as well as the ability to translate regulation guidance – something you see in both law and languages!
As a proud part of The Verve Group, we’ve always done compliance a little differently and that’s how we teach our students on The Art of Compliance too. Historically, compliance has been a bit of a negative service that comes in and find faults with the advice process and cause a headache to all! At our parent company, The Verve Group, they’ve adopted a much more practical and positive approach – offering an expert, pro-active team paired with technology to support the delivery of the service and make it useful to advisers.
Compliance is also one of the roles that people tend to ‘fall into’ – like Hannah, from The Verve Group. We caught up with her to understand her journey in financial services and what a day in the life of a compliance professional is like.
“Looking back to my time at school, I remember choosing my options for GCSEs and immediately realising how limited the options were. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do at college or what college I even wanted to go to. The options I chose were Art and Science which I enjoyed studying and they really helped me develop my creative and investigative nature. Moving onto A-levels I eventually decided on Psychology, Art and Photography. My only problem was, I couldn’t decide on a fourth option; my friend mentioned she was going to do law – so I thought I would join her in doing that (after all I did love an episode of Law and Order!). After my first law lesson, I never looked back and eventually progressed onto a Law degree at the University of Law, Manchester campus.
Fast forward three years and my time at University was nearly up and unlike my peers, I hadn’t even really thought about what I wanted to do next. Everyone knows about the stereotypical jobs to go into with a law degree – paralegal, solicitor, barrister etc, etc blah blah blah. The thing was, those roles just weren’t for me. I was so overwhelmed about choosing the right career for me that I decided to head back home to work in the hotel that I had been working at whilst on home breaks at University.
I remember spending hours trying to find jobs and careers that incorporated my law degree but I just couldn’t find anything. That’s when a family friend recommended I looked at The Grad Scheme. It was the office culture that drew me in straight away, a more chilled back and relaxed atmosphere with dogs in the office, what more could you want? When I applied for The Grad Scheme, there were only paraplanning roles available (I had no idea what a paraplanner was, I’d never even heard of the role until then), but I thought maybe it was time to leave law behind and try something new. To my surprise, they offered me a job in the new compliance firm they were just about to launch, what we now know as Apricity Compliance. A job that required some legal skills with a twist. It was perfect, I was going to be able to use my degree and I was to be the first-ever graduate under the new firm!
I’m approaching my three year anniversary and I’ve never looked back since joining Cathi and the team at The Verve Group.
My day to day job consists of a lot of things, no two days are ever the same here and that’s what I love about it. It’s a job where you are constantly learning and let’s face it who doesn’t love to learn new things?! One day I could be talking to an adviser about their business, another day reviewing advice they have given, or even helping someone submit an application to start a firm of their own. It’s crazy to think that three years ago I didn’t have a clue about the financial industry or what a paraplanner was, never mind a compliance consultant!
What I’m trying to say here is, finance isn’t just about money, suits and an old school system. Anyone with any degree and a passion to learn something new can find their way in finance. I did, so what are you waiting for?”
If you’d like to know more about getting into compliance then check out The Art of Compliance – which you can either do at your own leisure as an online programme, or if you’d like some more support through your exams and learning, including practical skills, roundtables and virtual sessions with our expert coaches, then check out our Supported Programme option.
