Mike Harrison joins financial services regulatory consultancy Bovill
As financial services operators adapt to another year of new regulations, consultancy Bovill has beefed up its Insurance and Lending team with a new practice leader. Mike Harrison brings two decades of regulatory and consulting expertise to the firm.
Financial regulation consultancy Bovill’s Insurance and Lending financial team advises the firm’s mortgage, consumer credit and insurance clients. The team specialises in a broad range of FCA regulations and their impact on a firm’s regulatory lifecycle. These include ad hoc support on technical matters, regulatory change management expertise, and customer-outcomes testing, among others.
Speaking on his new role, Harrison said, “The firm has an impressive breadth of interesting clients and projects which I look forward to engaging in. This is an exciting and challenging period for the financial services industry, and particularly for our sector, given the upcoming overhaul to Consumer Duty and the additional scrutiny the insurance market is currently under from the FCA.”
Harrison has extensive experience in many aspects of FCA regulations, including regulatory reporting, affordability and credit worthiness assessments, conduct and culture, and financial crime. This has seen him work as a ‘skilled person’ where firms were instructed by the Financial Conduct Authority to carry out a ‘section 166 review’ and with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) on the provision of guidance to other skilled persons.
Ben Blackett-Ord, CEO of Bovill, commented, “We are really looking forward to working with Mike and welcoming him to the team here at Bovill. Our team will be strengthened by his expertise and knowledge of the FCA’s skilled person review process and his work with ICAEW on the guidance. This perspective will enrich our understanding in supporting inhouse compliance departments and be invaluable to our clients.”
With over 25 years’ experience in financial services regulation, Harrison previously held a Senior Manager compliance advisory role at Deloitte. He also worked in similar roles with Huntswood, and The Consulting Consortium, while most recently he was Director of risk and compliance at Freedom Finance.
After a very slow start to 2021 in terms of FCA fines, there was a sting in the tail with the last month seeing the yearly total double to over £500 million pounds. 2022 has seen another slow beginning in this respect, with fines issued for 2022 thus far amounting to £10.9 million – but firms should be aware in that case that this may well come before a more severe conclusion to the year. In order to avoid that, firms would be well advised to seek out external expertise.