Furthermore, 38% of respondents said their teams were ‘not very’ or ‘not at all knowledgeable’ about changes in regulations; with the figure rising to 50% of respondents from medium-sized businesses, followed by 39% from small businesses. Large businesses fared significantly better with only 22% of their executives saying their teams do not have the requisite understanding.

The UK fared worse than its international counterparts in average perception of regulatory knowledge: 89% of CFOs and COOs in Hong Kong said their teams are “somewhat” or “very” knowledgeable, followed by 82% of peers in Germany and 70% in Singapore.

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Unsurprisingly, 87% of UK executives feel that staff should be knowledgable about regulatory change, but only 62% feel their staff are sufficiently informed.

‘Tick and bash mentality’

Neil Owen, global practice director at Robert Half, said finance compliance professionals “face a real dilemma: they have no choice but to manage the huge workload that regulatory change represents, but also find that their teams lack the necessary knowledge to keep their companies on top of it all;” the upshot of which would be increased demand for “interim and permanent FS staff with proven regulatory compliance and management skills.”

Meanwhile Jim Muir, director of AutoRek, a global financial controls software provider, has called for the simplification of compliance within financial services and that, in particular, “more automation and more auditability would reduce the burden and move organisations away from a tick and bash mentality”.

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Karen Wagstaffe, director of training and compliance at I-Comply-Online, a system that provides learning material for regulatory compliance, said the findings fit with her experience of working with finance staff who “have to spend more and more time on compliance function.”

On the varied level of employees’ compliance knowledge, Wagstaffe suggested the need for staff knowledge of regulations depended on size and sales processes of a business, but warned regulation “was going to get worse before it gets better.”