NED Forum Briefing: Lessons learned and strategic thinking for 2022

With Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) becoming increasingly important and intertwining priorities for the FCA, we are seeing a renewed policy, supervision and enforcement focus in this space, with clear implications for firm governance, individual and senior accountability, and culture. The ESG and D&I agendas encompass a broad range of topics, including product governance, greenwashing, stewardship, non-financial misconduct and speaking up. During this session, you will hear from A&O’s Consulting, Employment and Regulatory experts on the FCA’s increasing expectations of firms, enforcement trends and the FCA’s approach to investigations, and they will also share examples of where they have seen firms implement best practice as well as lessons learnt.

15:00 Registration and refreshments

15:30 Opening remarks
Pauline Hawkes-Bunyan, Director, Business: Risk, Culture & Resilience, The Investment Association

15:40 Keynote
Nike Trost, Head of Department – Asset Management and Pensions Policy, FCA

15:55 Presentation - ESG and D&I - How to make a sustainable change
Marc Teasdale, Managing Director, Allen & Overy
Robbie Sinclair, Partner, Allen & Overy
Sarah Hitchins, Partner, Allen & Overy

16.25 Panel
Moderator: Pauline Hawkes-Bunyan, Director of Business: Risk, Culture & Resilience, The Investment Association
Nike Trost, Head of Department – Asset Management and Pensions Policy, FCA
Marc Teasdale, Managing Director, Allen & Overy
Sarah Hitchins, Partner, Allen & Overy

17:00 Drinks and Networking

18:00 End

Pauline Hawkes-Bunyan, Director of Business: Risk, Culture & Resilience, The Investment Association
Pauline is the Executive Director responsible for The Investment Association’s (IA) NED Forum and the Business: Risk, Culture & Resilience team. She supports IA member firms to shape and respond to policy issues that impact on people and their firms.
Key areas include;

• People Resilience: Culture, Conduct D&I
• Operational & Cyber Resilience
• Regulatory change
• Technology

Pauline has spent more than 20 years in the investment management industry seeing industry opportunities and challenges from adviser, in-house and trade body perspectives. Prior to joining the IA, Pauline was a Director at Aviva and a Financial Services Partner at Deloitte.

Nike Trost Head of Asset Management and Pensions Policy, Market Wholesale Policy / Strategy and Competition Division
Nike Trost heads the Asset Management and Pensions policy department. As Head of Department Nike is responsible for delivering the FCA’s policy strategy in relation to the asset management sector and FCA regulated pensions.
Nike has 15 years regulatory experience gained from working across the FCA, including in asset management supervision, oversight of primary capital markets transactions and heading the FCA’s prospectus approval function.
Prior to holding this role Nike was the senior manager of the FCA’s Markets Policy department. In that capacity, she gained extensive policy making experience and oversaw several teams delivering a broad policy portfolio, including in relation to the UK’s primary markets and market abuse regimes, derivatives and securitisation regulations as well as wholesale market conduct, audit and accounting and sustainability/ESG policy.

Sarah Hitchins, Partner, Investigations, Allen & Overy
Sarah advises some of the world’s largest banks, insurers, wealth managers, brokers and asset managers on UK and cross-border regulatory and internal investigations involving a broad range of issues.
She handles sensitive and complex investigations for financial services firms that focus on culture, whistleblowing and ‘non-financial misconduct’, including in relation to bullying, harassment, favouritism, sexual misconduct and discrimination. She also has significant experience of advising clients in relation to individual accountability aspects of investigations, including assessments of fitness and propriety and potential breaches of the FCA/PRA Code of Conduct.
Sarah Co-Chairs our Individual Accountability Working Group and has handled numerous investigations which have involved individual accountability issues under the UK Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR). Sarah is one of the UK’s leading experts in this field and has advised over 100 banks, insurers, asset managers, funds, brokers and benchmark administrators in relation to issues arising from their implementation of and operation of the SMCR.

Robbie Sinclair, Partner, Employment, Allen & Overy
Robbie is a highly pragmatic and responsive lawyer who provides practical, commercial advice on all aspects of employment law to a number of leading investment managers.
Experienced in Employment Tribunal and High Court litigation, Robbie has acted for high profile clients in claims including unfair and constructive dismissal, whistleblowing, discrimination and contractual disputes. Robbie’s key strength is developing close client relationships and an in-depth commercial understanding of their challenges, ensuring he is well placed to assist on any employment-related issue, whether litigious, advisory or transactional.
Robbie has particular experience in the financial services sector, having recently advised on the employment aspects of a number of complex regulatory investigations, whistleblowing and contractual disputes. Robbie Co-Chairs our Individual Accountability Working Group have advised over 100 banks, insurers, asset managers, funds, brokers and benchmark administrators in relation to the implementation as well as post-implementation employment issues.

Marc Teasdale, Managing Director, Allen & Overy Consulting
Marc Teasdale joined A&O Consulting as a Managing Director on 1 September. He has over 20 years of experience at the Financial Conduct Authority and predecessor organisations, where he was most recently Director of Wholesale Supervision.
Marc is a highly experienced ex-regulator, and has spent the last 4 years as the Director of Wholesale Supervision where he set and oversaw the execution of supervision strategies for the largest institutions in the investment banking, asset management, custody banking, wholesale broking, trading firm and exchange sectors. His previous role’s included Director of Market Oversight, responsible for the FCA’s oversight of primary and secondary markets, and Head of the UKLA. Marc was also the Sponsor for the FCA’s implementation of MIFID II.