Compliance & Regulation

In the current climate compliance and regulatory expertise is vitally important and St Andrew's understands that the advice and expertise it can provide is of paramount importance and value to clients.

St Andrew's compliance team comprises individuals with many years' general insurance regulatory experience who have responsibility for ensuring that all St Andrew's activity meets the Financial Services Authority's (FSA) requirements, including assessing the extent to which company policy on Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) is being translated into day-to-day practice.

Dedicated individuals provide support to both our account management teams and, where required, directly to clients. They do this specifically by:

• Identifying and tracking any new regulatory developments that affect the insurance industry, including the outcome of trade association meetings and changes to legislation.
• Acting as a technical resource to which account management teams can refer regulatory issues that clients raise.
• Reviewing clients' marketing materials, and sales materials and scripts on request, and providing comment and sign-off from a St Andrew's perspective.
• Monitoring the FSA's developing expectations of the way in which it believes providers and distributors should interact to ensure customers are treated fairly, and working with account management to ensure that St Andrew's remains in line with FSA's views in its relationships with clients.
• Holding regular meetings with clients' compliance management (with the client's consent) to discuss respective approaches to compliance monitoring and TCF, share views on current developments, and generally enable each party to gain assurance about the other's compliance culture.

As an example of the regular services provided a Compliance update is issued every two months containing a round-up of recent regulatory developments and their potential implications.