FCA INTERVIEW Flashcards
WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE FCA?
The FCA is an independent public body funded entirely by the firms it regulates and was created by parliament on the 1st of April 2013 in the wake of a financial crisis.
The FCA replaced the Financial Services Act and was appointed more powers and tools to protect consumers and maintain the integrity of the UK’s financial system.
The FCA is accountable to Parliament and the Treasury.
It regulates over 60,000 financial firms and markets in the UK.
FCA’s work and purpose is defined by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000
Its 3 operational objectives are to 1. Protect consumers, 2. Protect and enhance integrity of the financial markets and 3. Promote effective competition.
The FCA identifies harm and potential harm through things like day to day contact with firms, calls from consumers, analysing intelligence rom whistleblowers and analysing complaints. Early identification allows FCA to take action swiftly to reduce or prevent harm to users.
WHY DO YOU FEEL YOU ARE SUITED TO A CAREER WITH THE FCA/ THIS ROLE?
I have worked n retail banking for over four years and I have a good understanding n the financial system, regulators and risks within the banking industry. With the knowledge and passion I already hold I feel that I could further pick up greater skills and develop my knowledge very quickly as it is not a completely foreign area to me.
I thrive in a busy and challenging environment which is how I imagine this role to be. I love learning and I am constantly taking up opportunities to improve my skills and understanding. For example, I recently completed my professional bankers certificate through metro bank. This role where I get to learn, work and complete a qualification is perfect for me.
I love analysing, investigating and as a person I tend to be a perfectionist. I like to get things right the first time and in terms of risk I understand the FCA work towards early identification to reduce or avoid harm to users. In my current role this is the approach I tend to take as I take responsibility of checking and amending any serious fails in store to avoid any trouble for the customer but also to avoid any serious policy or regulatory fails for the bank.
Risk and compliance is an area I am passionate about, I have actually been interested in the course itself for a long time but unfortunately my employer does not offer it and long term I would love to work in AML and this is just the perfect stepping stone for me to go into..
GIVE A TIME YOU SHARED AN OPINION WITH OTHERS- HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT IT AND WHAT WAS THE OUTCOME?
In my current role, I take care of everything ‘risk’ related for business accounts. I check that business customers have been on boarded using the correct procedure. I deliver coaching to my colleagues for any new procedures that have come into place and I promote awareness around potential policy or regulatory fails we need to avoid.
At the beginning of the year, we were receiving fails every month. I decided to implement a new system whereby all new business accounts need to be recorded on an excel spreadsheet so that these could be checked by me immediately and any potential fails could be rectified. Although my managers gave me the go ahead, my colleagues did not like my idea as they thought I was adding more work for them.
I tackled this by sitting down one on one with each colleague and showing them figures for all the fails we had received. I emphasised the impact this would have on the store, the company and the individual if this continued and proved that this was for their benefit too. After hearing the severity of the situation and learning that I was trying to help, my colleagues actioned the new idea immediately. As a result our fails went down drastically and as a store we have had zero fails since April.
DESCRIBE A TIME YOU SOLVED A QUERY/ PROBLEM?
Customer who had been away on holiday came into store extremely upset and frustrated that his card had stopped working for him while he was away which was a facility on the account. He had to use a different card which had charged him fees. The customer demanded that I close his account with us immediately as he could not trust his card to work on his next trip which was in a weeks’ time.
I sympathised with the customer and apologised for the experience he had. I asked him to give me a chance to make things right which he agreed to. I promised him that I would personally take ownership of the situation and have his card ready and working for his next trip. I spent the next few days communicating with card operations and IT as the issue was escalated to MasterCard. I kept in touch with the customer with each update that I received. When the new card was available I called the customer immediately.
The customer was able to leave with a card which worked for him abroad. I also logged an EOD and satisfaction guarantee for the charges incurred with his other bank. By taking ownership of the situation and communicating with the customer, I was able to prevent the customer closing his account and actually getting the issue resolved for him which he really appreciated and even mentioned stating that it would have been a lot easier for me to close his account with the way he had behaved when he came in upset the first time.
GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF WHEN YOU HAVE OVERCOME AN ISSUE AND ESCULATED THIS TO AN INDIVIDUAL OR TEAM?
I came across a customer who mentioned at the tellerline whilst I was serving him that he had been told he could not make International Payments to India from his business account. I was surprised to hear this so I questioned him further and found that a Cashier had informed him that a payment to a Business account in India was not possible- but a payment to an individual was. The customer seemed annoyed by this and had been paying more elsewhere for frequent payments to India.
It seemed to me that this could not entirely be true so I went on Metropedia and read that it did in fact state ‘Payments cannot be made to a business account, only to an individual.’ I still felt uncertain and offered to call EPT for the customer to find out if this was 100% the case. After bumping up to EPT I learnt that payments to a business in India were possible- we would just need some further details from the customer.
I gave this information to the customer and apologised for the miscommunication. The customer was surprised but pleased that he could carry on using our services and accepted my apology. I then provided feedback to our team to have the wording changed as it was causing miscommunication with our customers. As a result this was changed the same day and meant no more customers were turned away when attempting to do this kind of payment.
DESCRIBE A TIME YOU WERE MET WITH A DEMAND IN A CONFLICTING SITUATION. HOW DID YOU HANDLE IT?
It was a busy day at work and at one point there was a drunk customer who came in and started making threats as we were holding his money for a particular reason. A manager was dealing with the drunk customer and asked me to go into the back office and call the police as he was threading to go behind our counter. The other manager on duty was on lunch, all my colleagues were busy serving a long queue of customers and at the same time a small boy got his finger stuck in between our glass doors and a lot of blood started pouring from his wound.
He required first aid but I was not trained in this so I rushed to my manager, explained the situation and asked him to swap with me. I spoke with the drunk customer calmly and managed to take him away from the main banking hall and into one of our meeting rooms allowing my manager to deliver first aid to the little boy. While I was in the meeting room I pressed a panic alarm button which also notifies the police of an incident and messaged my colleagues to answer the phone from the police outside as I had pressed the panic alarm. I remained calm and collected and listened to the drunk customer until the police arrived and escorted him out. By thinking on my feet I managed to remain calm which kept the drunk customer calm and the little boy managed to get first aid help in a fast manner.
DESCRIBE A TIME YOU HAVE TAKEN OWENERSHIP OF SOMETHING IN THE PAST
Our business customer service rep transferred to another branch a couple of months back. As I enjoy the business area more in my role, I decided to take ownership of this area. I contacted my colleague who had left and made a list of all the areas she looked after under business. I then took time outside of working hours to learn the responsibilities and collaborated with my business manager to identify what my priorities should be. I also brushed up my knowledge around things like high risk businesses, common policy and regulatory fails received by the store and procedures for opening complex business accounts.
Soon, my colleagues were coming to me for queries and support needed around business accounts. This gave me the confidence to push further and I started coaching my colleagues on a one on one basis to mitigate risks around high risk industries and countries that a business may be trading with. In the past, we would get a policy or regulatory fail every 2-3 months but when I stepped up I introduced a procedure which brought all fails down to a zero. I had my colleagues place new accounts on a spreadsheet so I could check the accounts immediately. Any errors would be fixed before our retail quality team checked the accounts and I manage all of this as well as carrying out the basics of my role.
GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF WHEN YOU HAD TO MEET A DEADLINE/ WHEN YOU HAVE WORKED UNDER PRESSURE
Recently, Metro Bank’s share prices dropped and at the same time false information about us closing circulated around on whatsapp and social media. As a result we lost some of our biggest commercial customers and customers started taking their money and banking elsewhere. I take care of savings deposits at my branch and noticed a decline in customers opening savings accounts with us. Every month I was providing my manager figures of around £500k from existing and new customers fixing their savings with us and this time my manager asked me to meet that same target, no less despite all the negativity we were receiving.
I had a month to reach this target so I created a plan on how I would meet this within the deadline. Usually I would call existing customers to get them interested in reinvesting their money with us and I would promote savings products to new customers in store. This time I changed my approach and physically took a group of colleagues to talk to customers in the high street. I handed out information on Metro Bank being covered under the FSCS. I clarified any concerns people had around the fake messages on Whatsapp. I also made calls to existing customers as I usually would and explained the reality of the situation over the phone.
I met my target earlier than the deadline but continued putting in the work and as a result finished on a total of over a million in reinvestments and new deposits for that month. I was recognised by my local director for exceeding my target goal within the deadline simply by going out to the general public and educating them on what was true and how they were protected as customers of Metro Bank.
DESCRIBE A TIME YOU WERE ASKED TO DO SOMETHING UNETHICAL BY A MANAGER?
When I first started at my current job, I was struggling to open lending products such as credit cards, overdrafts and loans to our customers. Some of my colleagues were performing really well in this area so I asked a manager for support on what I could be doing better. I was told to increase the salary input into the system and keep running credit checks until the system generated lending products for the customer. I was shocked to hear this kind of advice as firstly each credit check leaves a hard footprint on the customer’s credit file and secondly this was inputting false information for the sake of meeting targets.
I raised these two points to my manager and said that I didn’t feel comfortable doing it after which he stated that he had been joking the whole time. I noticed that actually this is what some of the colleagues were doing and when I questioned them they stated that one particular manager had advised them to change income figures and re-run credit checks. I felt this was morally wrong to our customers and something needed to change. I used our internal whistleblowing process to escalate this to someone higher up. A week later, the regional operations manager came into the branch and questioned colleagues around processes and also made it clear that all credit checks were being monitored. The manager in question received a disciplinary and this has deterred anyone from abusing our systems for their own benefit.
STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE?/ A TIME WHERE YOU HAVE LEAD A PROJECT
When I was working at a start-up Law firm, the firm was not getting any business so I was asked to organise something to promote the firms services. Previously at university, I had carried out ‘Street Law’ sessions where we called the local public in for sessions on different areas of the law and promoted awareness. I decided this would be a perfect idea to get more customers in by spreading word on the high streets and getting them into the office for short presentations on the firm and what we had to offer.
I determined the client base as we provided services on area of family law and immigration law. I set a clear project goal which would be measured by the increase in business we received that month. This was done by gathering in as many people every lunchtime, for 3 days to promote our services, prices and build a client base through leaflets and word of mouth. I set a budget for leaflets and refreshments and scheduled the 3 days that the street law project would take place. I also ensured that our specialist solicitors and manager would be in on those days to present their services. I communicated everything back to the team every step of the way so we were all on the same page.
During the first session, I identified schedule risk when my colleague took questions throughout their presentation and this took them over their 5 minute schedule which meant there was not enough time to promote other areas of the business. I mitigated this by having timers on the next 2 sessions and also taking questions at the end of presentations. As a result of my organisations skills and interactive presentations from my team, the business slowly picked up and the firm took on cases which we had managed to land through word of mouth. I noticed things go wrong very early into us delivering the first session, but I identified these so that they could be avoided and the project could run smoothly which it did.
What are the four stages of risk framework ?
Risk identification: communicating with firms, monitoring activity, analysing whistleblowing and investigating complaints
Risk measurement: measured on basis of risk probability and risk impact. Then given a risk grading
Risk mitigation: grading of the risk allows FCA to prioritise risk assessment and mitigation
Risk monitoring and reporting: FCA will monitor the progress of the risk
Media attention?
FCA fined standard life assurance 30 million for failing to have adequate controls in place over their contact centre and the communication between staff and non advised customers.
Focus on vulnerable customers as just yesterday FCA launched a consultation for firms on the fair treatment of vulnerable customers. As well as this FCA has introduced campaigns such as the scam smart campaign with elderly in mind.
Planning for brexit: has planned for no deal brexit. At the moment firms in the EEA conduct business through passporting but if this was drastically dropped when eu leave then there is a temporary permissions regime in place allowing them to conduct business as normal temporarily.
