We ran our first ever webinar on 30th September and this is what we learnt.
The webinar, ‘SM&CR the final countdown – 50 working days to go’, was co-hosted with TISA and focused on the major outstanding actions that firms should be focusing on ahead of ‘Day One’ on December 9th.
The webinar was well attended with 150 delegates who actively participated both through Q&A and answering the ‘in-webinar’ poll questions.
There were two key poll questions that asked about delegates’ firms’ readiness for ‘Day One’ and delegates’ confidence about in their ability to deliver SM&CR successfully;
When asked about their challenges, respondents provided some very interesting responses;
The first four questions relate to the Senior Manager regime and as these tend to be the first area of focus for project teams, it is surprising that these areas are still a challenge, particularly the question about gaining senior manager buy in. It suggests that some firms are still struggling to resolve one of the fundamentals of SM&CR implementation, i.e. allocating and gaining agreement to Prescribed Responsibilities and gaining senior manager buy in.
The final three questions relate to Certification and Conduct Rules. It is understandable that these challenges are ‘front of mind’ for half, or close to half, of respondents. However, given that people falling under SM&CR need to be displaying conduct rules behaviours appropriate for their role from day one, it does raise questions about firms’ readiness for ‘Day One’.
By contrast, the second question focuses on webinar delegates level of confidence about the progress of their progress of their SM&CR project. Again, the results proved very interesting.
However the message is clear, given the challenges identified by respondents are large and the timescales, time is of the essence! There is a great deal still to do and not much time to do it in.It’s encouraging that over 80% of respondents are ‘somewhat’ or ‘fairly’ confident. However, looking at the challenges ahead and respondents’ confidence, is there a slight disconnect? For the industry’s sake we hope not!
Worksmart’s multi-award winning SM&CR software, Accord, is a significant enabler to all the challenges identified by respondents (with the exception of gaining senior manager buy in and identifying SHF communities!) Our multi-award winning regulatory consulting team is also on hand if you feel you need any advice.
Give us a call for a no obligation chat or arrange a free product demo on; 01908 613613, or visit our website.