Financial firms' management teams are keen to engage positively with the new Conduct regulatory worldview, yet many remain unclear how in practice they should set about the 'culture assessment' they need to do before filing a plausible Conduct report. The regulator challenges each firm to reflect and devise its own reporting format for this. Whilst there are some emerging commonly agreed 'new MIs' (reporting indicators) for 'healthy culture', many firms are wrestling to progress beyond conventional op-risk indicators. Balance-sheet accounting ratios and risk appetite measures, for example, are wholly unfit for the purpose of the new Conduct reporting. However well-intended, firms face the nagging doubt that 'the MI we have is not the MI we need' for reporting on Conduct and Culture. What then are the necessary new indicators and where should firms find them' Is the answer to re-purpose existing compliance and surveillance tools; to blow the budget on 'reg tech'; or something else entirely, perhaps simpler' How should firms' Conduct indicators best reflect engagement with rapid changes in the business landscape, such as Covid-19 and recent public challenges to institutions' 'social licence'?

This workshop shares sector-wide insights gained by UK Finance's Conduct specialists working with member and other firms over more than a decade to identify robust indicators for Conduct and Culture reporting. The UK is now just one among many Conduct and Culture reporting regimes: around the world central banks, prudential authorities and securities regulators are now rolling out 'measured supervision of Culture', with many of their core principles and methods now aligning internationally. From now on, financial firms will be required to report measured progress against clearly defined corporate purpose; to demonstrate how governance and incentives support a culture of responsible risk-taking; and to demonstrate 'psychological safety' in action, calibrating their efforts at driving out all forms of misconduct.

Member firms' senior and Conduct leaders often ask us how best to assemble a meaningful report on these apparently abstract challenges. The data needed seems elusive: Where might a firm find reliable metrics for nonfinancial and behaviour-at-risk factors' Some firms' early attempts have been derailed, for example by staff second-guessing 'expected' or self-serving answers. Robust indicators do exist - but most lie beyond the boundaries of conventional management reporting clusters (MI).  This workshop shows where else to look and how to create business value as you do so: using the new indicators to make the firm more responsive and resilient, reducing costs of staff attrition and improving pre-customer business quality, all while satisfying the regulator.

Learning outcomes:

• Essentials of measured reporting of Conduct and Culture to the regulator: Defining and aligning measurable purpose, incentives and risk culture. The technique of asking 'better questions' to achieve this. 
• Four ways that supervisory agencies use non-financial measures of behaviour
• Regulators' latest approach to testing and measurement (including: Culture assessment, direct observation, behavioural testing of products, use of external / 'unstructured' data, launching new proxy indicators)
• Towards indicators for behaviour ('what actually happens') instead of sentiment ('what people think') 
• Capturing and comparing data on financial and non-financial misconduct (such as: inclusion, thought-diversity, positive challenge, speaking up)
• Old v. new measures of corporate health
  • Moving beyond the old reporting practices (financial ratios, staff sentiment surveys, net promoter scores) to introduce effective, behaviour-aware indicators
  • Setting up and calibrating the new indicator sets: psychological safety; cognitive diversity; leadership character and 'anti-bystanding'; customer and employee focus; effective governance; trustworthiness and transparency, and more
• Simple enough but no simpler: Is a core set of 'silver bullet' core indicators possible'; acknowledging practical limits and pitfalls 
• Robust proxy indicators that regulators will respect (and already use themselves)
• An up-to-date Top 30 MIs for Conduct and Culture as found among member firms, including 'what we currently use v. 'what we'd like to have'.
• Which Conduct MIs are regulators themselves experimenting with? Should we be using these?
• Next-generation tech and methods: how regulators are already capturing and making sense of these; the future direction of Conduct and Culture reporting MIs

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