Annual Competence Assessment

Course Overview

The Senior Management & Certification Regime (SMCR) and Consumer Duty have made it imperative for firms to substantiate the competence of their people and their ability to provide good consumer outcomes.

The ad hoc assessment of your people’s competence is no longer acceptable as evidence, especially when it comes to supporting the Senior Management Function that holds Prescribed Responsibility b: responsibility for the firm’s performance of its obligations under the certification regime.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• How do you prove to the regulator and your accredited body that your people are competent to do the job they have been employed to do?
• What evidence has the firm got to prove your people have been effectively assessed as competent and are actively maintaining their competence?

If this is proving difficult, we could have the answer.

Assessment Centres

• Highly experienced at running assessment centres
  The partners and consultants at ZISHI have been providing competency assessments for a number of years for regulated roles to a wide range of firms across financial services. We understand what is required and how to assess in the most efficient and effective way. We can undertake the facilitation and management of your process from start to finish.
• Cost effective
  The most cost-effective way of assessing competence is through an assessment centre using role plays and case studies. However, if required we can assess live client facing situations. For those individuals who undertake dealing with advice we can listen to calls either on site or remotely given the customer technology.We can assess live client files at an individual’s place of work. However, in order to assess the competence of an individual to correctly transfer the information collected from the client into ‘client files’ it is better if a role-play is followed through with an assessment of the completion of the client file documentation and Portfolio construction if relevant.

  Your supervisors (often managing and advising their own clients) are free to continue with day-to-day activities and only need to review the evidence we collect as part of their ongoing competence assessments of the team.

• Authentic clients
  We provide actors who play the part of clients. They are experienced at playing a cross-section of financial services clients and have been doing this for many years, so react exactly as genuine clients will i.e. if you do not ask the question they will not supply you with the relevant information or if you use financial jargon that a normal customer wouldn’t recognise they will question you or look confused.
• Constructive feedback
  We give constructive feedback to everyone who is assessed.

Evidence of competence

Upon completion, you will be provided with:

• Completed observation forms (using your documentation) to evidence the outcome of the assessment of competence in the client fact finding / KYC meeting and Dealing with Advice telephone call.
• Completed client file assessment forms to ensure correct completion of the file documentation and Portfolio construction.
• Development points where required and a recommended course of action if necessary.
• A recording of the roleplay can be provided should there be any cause to question the assessment of competence.

If you would like to keep the assessment of competence in-house but lack the capacity or experience to design a competency framework, we can do that for you too. Simply get in touch today to discuss your requirements.