SMCR – how prepared are you?

“Form K must be accompanied by a Statement of Responsibilities for each Senior Management Function (SMF) and an overall management responsibilities map.”

It seems like a strange way to begin an article but as we are now over half way through 2018 and SMCR regime begins next year, it might be timely to remind everyone of what they need to be doing now to prepare.

“The SMCR will affect the most senior management, with board members (or equivalent) and those who have significant influence, or the ability to cause significant harm to a firm’s business, being assessed and registered as falling within the Senior Managers requirements…”

Although there are a number of issues to consider, there are four which need to be considered now:

• Statements of responsibility; 
• Board composition and management structure; 
• Contractual requirements; and 
• Modification of internal processes and procedures.

The area we will look at in this article is the first one – statements of responsibility – as it is the one that firstly, you should already have some structure for and secondly, because it is the area that often can take the most time to agree. 

Having said that, often firms do not have a clear map of responsibilities or accurate job profiles, therefore we will use the term ‘job specifications’, which is a set of specified job responsibilities that each Senior Manager has accepted and agreed is their responsibility within the firm. 

Often, firms will have ensured that more junior employees have these specifications, but senior people often do not due to taking joint responsibility or switching from area to area of the business depending on the day of the week! 

This is not necessarily a problem as this is often how brokers will work, but the bottom line is that a named individual will take ultimate responsibility for specific issues within the firm – money laundering for example.

Practical steps that you should be taking: 

• Consider, at board level, exactly who is responsible for what area of the firm’s business and ensure that this is minuted as an action point, with a specific date deadline for completion.
• As part of the exercise, consider exactly what Senior Management functions will apply to your firm. As part of that action, acknowledge that this is not an HR issue – this is a corporate governance issue that needs to be tackled as early as possible. 
• Consider that there may be a need to propose employment contract changes if a specific responsibility has not fallen to an individual previously, since that individual may have the right to not wish to carry that responsibility. 
• You will probably find it useful to work with your internal compliance department (or external consultant) to identify what roles and responsibilities need to be scoped out. 
• Don’t forget that the SMCR allows someone to cover for a senior manager, without being approved by the FCA, where the absence is temporary or reasonably unforeseen and the appointment is for less than 12 consecutive weeks – the ’12 week rule’. This is an important part of your planning and this responsibility will also need to be written into that individual’s job spec, so you may decide that now is the time to revisit all your firm’s job specs – not just the senior management ones

This article is provided for information purposes and is general and educational in nature. Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice. You are free to choose whether or not to use it and it should not be considered a substitute for seeking professional legal help in specific circumstances.