Employment Vetting Prominent in latest FSA Guidance

Employment Vetting features prominently in the FSA’s latest consultation paper CP11/12 – Financial Crime a Guide for Firms. The consultation paper provides guidance on steps firms can take to reduce their financial crime risk illustrated with examples of good and bad practice it has found among regulated firms.

Good Employment Vetting practices highlighted included:

• Staff are vetted using a risk based approach taking into account data security and other fraud risk
• Enhanced Vetting – including checks of credit records, criminal records and financial sanctions checks are made on employees in roles with access to large amounts of customer data
• Vetting should be proportionate and risk based i.e. not one size fits all
• Vetting should be repeated and on-going where appropriate
• Firms should have a good understanding of vetting conducted by employment agencies for temporary and contract staff
• The level of vetting conducted by third party suppliers is monitored and verified

Poor employment vetting practices observed included:

• Allowing new recruits to access customer data before vetting had been completed
• Temporary staff receiving less rigorous vetting than permanently employed colleagues carrying out similar roles
• Employee vetting is only a one-off exercise i.e. no on-going element
• Enhanced vetting checks only being applied to staff in Approved Person positions
• Relying entirely on an individual’s reputation as the basis for employment i.e. no vetting checks made

Know Your Candidate’s employment vetting service can help financial services firms, their suppliers and recruitment partners to implement the suggestions made by the FSA.

• Full range of background checks available in any combination to facilitate a risk based approach
• Fast turnaround times to ensure all staff are vetted before starting their role
• Bulk options available to facilitate annual and on-going checking
• Flexible pay-as-you-go service with no minimum volume commitments to make it cost effective for individual suppliers and recruitment firms to check a small number of staff to the levels desired by the regulated firm

Financial Services firms and their suppliers can learn more about our employment screening service including what our customers say at www.knowyourcandidate.co.uk/financial-services.cfm

Click here to view a copy of CPA 11/12 – Financial Crime a Guide for Firms