What We Do

We work with financial services boards and senior managers to deliver sustainable business models by helping them achieve commercial, operational, and financial resilience.

Commercial Resilience

Operational Resilience

Financial Resilience

How we can support your business?

Advice and guidance

Our team of experts can help you navigate the regulatory regime as it applies to you. Covering both conduct and prudential matters, you can tap into our experience and insights from the wider market to help improve your regulatory risk management and control. Using our forward-looking approach, we can help identify the key issues for your business and deliver tailored, practical solutions.

Health Check

Our health-check methodology covers not only the regulatory requirements, but also enables an invaluable benchmark with other similar businesses. Covering financial soundness, operational resilience and culture and conduct, our tailored health-check service goes beyond a “one size fits all” audit and gets to the heart of the key issues for you. We can provide practical support to help you achieve improved outcomes.

Project Solutions

From overall project management and governance to support with specific project deliverables, our specialists can provide expert and pragmatic solutions. We can cover every aspect of delivery, looking at high-level outcomes and providing detailed analysis to ensure there are no gaps and looking out for potential pitfalls to enable successful, timely results.

Co-sourcing

Working in partnership with you, we give you immediate access to wider skills and experience from our specialists with experience of helping similar firms. Our cost-effective, tailored service means you only pay for the skills when you need them.

Training

We provide a range of tailored training to financial services firms. Our team of experts have the gravitas and credentials to design and present credible, effective training, from board-level briefings to delivery of regulatory modules for all levels.

Mentoring

We are providing mentoring program to senior executive and board members on risk management, governance and regulatory affairs. We have the experience of supporting senior leaders as part of their transition into a new role or to deal with a specific regulatory hot spot.

Our Core Offering

Navigating the regulatory landscape

Using our multi-disciplinary expertise, we can help you cut through the complexities and go beyond the headlines of the regulatory change agenda to understand the key elements for your business – and the potential opportunities for you to get ahead of the pack.

Embedding Consumer Duty

The new Consumer Duty represent a fundamental change of consumer protection standards for financial services. We are uniquely placed to help firms embed them into a sustainable business model that works for you and your customers.

Assisting transactions

A well-organised, detailed approach to due diligence is essential for any successful M&A process. We can assist buyers and sellers throughout the M&A lifecycle, from your preliminary business case, through to detailed analysis reviews and deal closing confirmation – right up to final authorisation.

Enhancing governance

As your business evolves, we can assess if your governance arrangements are fit for purpose – and whether they’ll hold up against regulatory scrutiny. We design, implement and review governance and control frameworks, using a forward-looking, outcomes-focused approach, and our in-depth understanding of regulatory drivers.

Managing risk and building resilience

Our risk management approach enables you to identify, monitor and report on current, potential and future risks. Our risk specialists can help you to understand the full spectrum and sources of your financial to operational risks, and design and implement processes to minimise their impact.

Supporting your ESG ambitions

ESG is about the spirit in which you run your business, about the culture you create within it. The implementation of an ESG Strategy is inevitably both detailed and complicated – but we can help cut through create something proportionate, practical and effective.

Our Solutions

Business model analysis: Your business through a regulatory lens

Through our business model analysis, we can examine your income and revenue streams and identify any potential conduct risks that may impact your model’s overall sustainability and work with you on pragmatic, practical solutions for your needs.

Prudential and conduct healthcheck

Tapping into experience and insights from the wider market, we can provide independent and objective insights, getting to the heart of the key issues. We can deliver credible and relevant, independent assurance. Our crisp perspective combined with our depth and breadth of expertise means we can make practical recommendations and offer pragmatic solutions.

Regulatory Affairs

Our team’s range of experience, including in senior regulatory roles, conducting reviews for the regulators, and relevant industry experience of manging the outcomes of regulatory interventions, means we are well-placed to help you prepare for and manage your regulatory relationships effectively. We have acted for a number of firms as “trusted advisor”, breaking down the theory into real, practical help and assistance, gained from our experience with a range of firms facing similar issues.

We can support you specifically in the following areas:

– FCA and PRA interviews and meeting preparation

– S.166 preparation and dry-run

– Regulatory engagement strategy

– Authorisation applications

– SMF approval process – mentoring and preparation

– New product launch

Effective governance

We can review your governance and control frameworks, using a forward-looking, outcomes focused approach and our in-depth understanding of regulatory drivers, as well as good business sense. Our focus is on looking at how well your arrangements, both on paper and in practice, deliver clear and transparent governance and clarity in decision-making.

SM&CR Implementation Review

Our experts have worked with a range of firms on their SMCR delivery programmes, from ‘limited scope’ brokerages to large-scale multinationals. We have a range of training programmes and document suites that we can adapt for the specific needs of your business. Alongside our deep knowledge of the regulatory requirements, we can offer practical advice on your Statements of Responsibilities, Fit & Proper processes, Responsibilities Maps and Conduct Rules programmes.

Culture review and framework

Our culture framework provides a structured approach to help you navigate the challenges of defining, understanding and managing your culture. From examining your people and customer experiences, we can help you identify practical ways of delivering your business objectives, purpose and ambition.

Pricing practices

Our focus and expertise on fair pricing practices brings together the various FCA initiatives and the recent General Insurance Pricing Practices Market Study, and considers the issue ‘in the round’ with product value measures, customer demand and needs, treatment of vulnerable customers and communications transparency. We can help you navigate the myriad regulatory requirements to deliver clear pricing strategies, supported by robust governance frameworks, aligned to your business model and customer base.

Our experts have provided practical solutions, including building appropriate governance and oversight models, supported by MI and KRIs that can test and evidence fair value in pricing, products and services. We have helped firms design and implement pricing strategies, providing guidance and oversight, along with hands-on support in drafting documents to meet regulatory expectations. We have also helped build appropriate product governance frameworks, aligned to value measures and delivery of fair customer outcomes.

We are also well placed to provide insight and oversight to your product and pricing strategies and plans, using our extensive regulatory knowledge and understanding of industry good practice.

Co-sourcing of your control functions – risk, compliance, audit

Working in partnership with you, we can enhance your assurance functions whilst keeping you in control. We give you immediate access to wider skills and experience, combined with the deep understanding of the business of the in-house team. We can provide a cost-effective, relevant solution, tailored to your specific needs, focused on current and emerging risks and the latest regulatory and market insights.

Complaints handling

Alongside our ‘health check’ / review service for your complaints handling, we can help you look beyond the regulations in DISP to identify practical solutions to deliver the customer outcomes that will improve advocacy and retention of your book.

Regulatory Horizon Planning

We are well-connected to regulatory change agenda and areas of focus and keep our clients up-to-date with impacts for their business to not only meet the regulatory requirements, but also looking at opportunities from a commercial perspective, such as customer retention. Using our multi-disciplinary expertise, we can help you cut through the complexities and go beyond the headlines to understand the key elements for your business and potential opportunities for you to get ahead of the pack.

M&A/Due Diligence

A well-organised, detailed approach to due diligence is essential for any successful M&A process. Our experts can review and validate value proposition assumptions, understand financial, operational and conduct risks and issues and provide actionable feedback. We have assisted a number of firms throughout the M&A lifecycle, from preliminary business case, through to detailed analysis reviews and deal closing confirmation.

Operational Risk Management & Quantification

Our operational risk management framework enables you to identify, monitor and report the risks to which your firm may be exposed currently or potentially. Our risk specialists can help you to understand the sources of risk and minimise the impacts. We partnered with Elseware to deploy a structured scenario-based approach to operational risk management and quantification

Climate Change financial risk management

We have developed an approach to integrate the impact of climate change into your existing risk management framework. Our framework covers 4 dimensions: governance, risk management, scenario analysis and disclosure.

We partnered with Elseware to bring a climate change scenario model to the market to assess the impact on assets and liabilities, capturing transition and physical risk. Already implemented by several financial institutions, this approach supports setting strategy, regulatory reporting and stress tests (e.g. Bank of England BES scenario analysis) and external disclosure (e.g. TCFD).

Learn more

Data protection

With a wealth of experience in the financial services sector, and a focus on the insurance sector, we can provide you with guidance and support to update your GDPR policy frameworks, training and awareness delivery and process alignment to ensure a continued compliance with the regulations whatever the outcome.

Learn more

Pre-paid funeral plans

Legislation to regulate the provision and distribution of pre-paid funeral plans was introduced in January 2021, and regulation extending to providers and intermediaries will start on 29 July 2022. The new regime will represent a significant change for some providers – on an aggressive timetable that allows them very little time to adapt.

Sicsic Advisory can support your firm with the following:

Support in responding to FCA consultation
Carrying out gap analysis and developing action plan
Supporting your firm throughout your application and authorisation process

Learn more

Client Success Stories

Pricing practices

What was the project?

In the context of the FCA initiatives on pricing practices in the insurance market, our client needed to improve their overall approach to pricing practices with the development of a formal pricing strategy and a governance and control framework around it.

Sicsic Advisory involvement

SA provided both Board-level guidance and consultancy to help shape the direction and strategy of the firm’s approach to pricing, as well as day-to-day hands-on support and assistance in the design and drafting of the pricing documents.

SA engaged with the Board and senior management on ensuring the approach to pricing was focused on the key areas of regulatory attention and customer outcomes.

Our consultants worked closely with senior individuals at the firm in the design of the Pricing Strategy, Pricing Rules and the Governance and Control Framework, including providing insights into the areas of regulatory concern, challenging certain assumptions from a regulatory conduct perspective, as well as practical assistance and support in structuring the documents and drafting suggested content.

The SA team undertook a considerable amount of detailed analysis into the firm’s pricing practices and charging models, to be able to gain an in-depth understanding of the firm’s approach and to be able to provide practical, pragmatic advice and support.

Results

The SA team quickly established sound working relationships with the senior individuals at the firm responsible for pricing decisions and were able to respond very quickly in respect of answering queries and reviewing / updating documents.
The timeframes for responding to the regulator’s request were very stretching, so it was a real success that the firm were able to meet the required deadlines, including allowing sufficient time for Board reflection and approval.
The SA team also provided advice and support to the second-line function, by undertaking a gap analysis review of the firm’s response and pricing documents against the FCA Thematic Review and Dear CEO letter, and other relevant regulatory pricing requirements.

Areas of expertise:

Governance

SM&CR

What was the project?

A successful FTSE100 insurance group, which offers consumer general insurance products in the UK and continental Europe, appointed Sicsic Advisory to provide advice and hands-on assistance to the second phase implementation of its SM&CR (senior management accountability) programme.

Sicsic Advisory involvement

There had been increased regulatory scrutiny following the first phase of the programme and the particular challenge was to re-design the previous approach and ensure timely delivery in a way which:

Sought to enhance rather than impair the Group’s successful dynamic, collegiate culture and strong record of success
Enabled a consistent roll-out across five regulated entities with a variety of business models, which assisted the Group Board and functions to exercise more effective oversight
Met heightened regulatory expectations
Used and built on as much of the first phase work as possible.

Sicsic Advisory’s senior consultants, whose own experience includes relevant up-to date senior executive and non-executive roles across a range of other organisations, worked flexibly and collaboratively with a wide range of senior and delivery manager stakeholders. We worked closely with the firm’s programme management and consulted regularly with and trained senior executives and non-executive directors at Group level and in all the relevant business entities. This ensured appropriate and consistent senior level focus on the delivery of desired outcomes to a demanding timetable.

Results

All the objectives of the programme were achieved, with signoffs from the regulated entity and Group boards, within the required timescale and agreed budget.

Areas of expertise:

Regulatory

360 Healthcheck – Review of governance and risk management practices

What was the project?

One of the world’s top tier private firms had recently bought out a FTSE250 key player with a strong consumer profile in the UK general insurance market. Sicsic Advisory was appointed to assist the newly appointed CEO of the acquired firm in reviewing its governance and risk management practices, and advise on where it should focus in order to meet both rising regulatory expectations of firms in its sector and specifically of the firm given its market presence and growth ambitions.

Sicsic Advisory involvement

Sicsic Advisory performed diagnostic assessments covering:

Business Model sustainability
Conduct & Prudential regulatory readiness
Governance & Risk Management practices

Having unique insights into market practices and areas of regulatory focus on pricing and value for money in general insurance products, sales process (including IDD requirements), culture & governance and cyber & operational resilience, enabled Sicsic Advisory to produce a rapid, highly targeted analysis and of the firm’s gaps. With deep practical relevant experience of working in similar firms, our consultants were able to produce a series of prioritised highly actionable recommendations to address these within the short window ahead of closer regulatory scrutiny. The recommendations were framed around strengthening the firm’s business model for the medium and longer term, and thereby enabling it to play a greater part in influencing industry and regulatory change.

Results

Our report and recommendations were readily accepted by both the firm and its new owner and formed the basis of an 18-month programme of tactical actions and strategy development for the firm.

Area of expertise:

Regulatory
Health check

S166 remediation

What was the project?

A specialist insurer with an overseas parent was facing increasing PRA scrutiny and subject to a s166 review covering governance, risk management and parent’s influence of the UK operations. SA supported the firm in designing, implementing and embedding a Risk and Governance change program ahead of the formal commencement of the s166.

Sicsic Advisory involvement

Sicsic Advisory’s consultants oversaw the changes to the Risk & Governance Change programme:

Transitioning of Board composition with reallocation of SM roles into UK, onboarding of NEDs in line with new succession policy
Refreshing SM&CR bringing clarity of roles and responsibilities
Revising committee structure and ToR to clarify the role of the board and its sub-committees, supporting a robust implementation of three lines of defence model, extending the role of the second line of defence
Enhancing board oversight of material transactions through revised Risk Appetite
Updating the firm’s RMF, bringing it into line with good market practice & regulatory requirements
Improving governance with enhanced oversight of board risk committee , creating a new executive risk committee

Sicsic Advisory provided a dedicated project management resource to co-ordinate all activities.

Working closely with senior leadership team in scheduling a program of activities to prepare the Board and management for the s166. Our ‘behind the scenes’ activities supported the firm in successfully leading the engagement with the skilled person and regulator.

Results

Introducing a governance structure and an effective Risk Management Framework suitable for the firm’s size and profile meeting regulatory requirements and good practice.

Introducing disciplined project management practices, ensuring all deliverables are implemented in good time.

We guided and prepared the firm for the s166, anticipating the skilled persons area of focus. Interviewees were consistent in message.

Areas of expertise

Governance
Compliance and Risk
Project Management
Regulatory Change

ORIC – Operational Resilience cooperation

What was the project?

We have established a strong relationship with ORIC International, a leading provider of specialist operational risk data and benchmarking services with extensive global membership across both the general and life insurance sectors (over 40 members). ORIC facilitates the anonymised and confidential exchange of operational risk intelligence between member firms, providing industry benchmarks and setting trusted standards. Sicsic Advisory partnered with ORIC to set up an operational resilience benchmarking solution for insurers and investment firms.

Sicsic Advisory involvement

This cooperation has enabled us to run four extensive operational resilience benchmark exercises, including:

Identification of an Important Business Service
Setting an Impact Tolerance (duration and rationale)
Current and Target Maturity for each key element (using our internally developed maturity matrix), and
BAU Transitions and Regulatory Engagement

The data analysed from these surveys and the extensive discussions we have had with a large proportion of the respondents, has provided both an extensive understanding of the challenges firms are facing as well as a detailed benchmarking of the approach and outputs in delivering operational resilience across the UK insurance market. It has also been used to update the Board on how the firm benchmarks against peers and setting target maturity levels.

Results

Several UK insurers have relied on this information to benchmark their own programmes, with a number reporting that they have made changes to their programmes as a result of reviewing this output.

Our in-depth regulatory knowledge has provided an early indication of any perceived weaknesses in approach with recommendations for focus areas.

Areas of expertise

Operational resilience

Regulatory due diligence

What was the project?

A large firm, actively pursuing growth through acquisition, was seeking a long-term partnership to support acquisition projects on an ongoing basis. Building a long-term relationship was critical to ensure that they had a trusted resource whose thinking was aligned to their own. By understanding the firm’s business model, tolerances and a respect for the importance and value of both internal and external relationships during an initial project, we have now been appointed on a retainer basis to deliver all regulatory due diligence for this firm, delivering more than 30 projects in the last 24 months.

Sicsic Advisory involvement

Sicsic Advisory worked with the firm to establish appropriate content of an initial information request with a view to conducting an initial high-level view. We were able to anticipate and identify any major issues and deliver an initial ‘Red Flag’ Report highlighting any potential ‘showstoppers’ to the firm at an early stage in the process.

In the absence of any ‘Red Flag’ issues, Sicsic Advisory identified all follow-up information, collaborated with the firm and met with the Target to deliver a wider understanding of their approach and gain a full understanding of:

The Business Model and Scope of Activities
Regulatory Understanding, Culture and Environment
Internal Procedures and Processes & Potential Integration Issues
Understanding and testing the Customer Journey
Alignment to the firm’s own operations, identifying potential integration barriers

Sicsic Advisory delivered a full Regulatory DD report, identifying significant issues with recommended solutions to support the integration post completion. Worked with the target to mitigate any pre-completion risks, enabling the final handover of the findings to meet the expectations and requirements of key stakeholders (banks, PE fund, etc).

Results

Recommendations were made for any pre-sale work, and we supported the firm in putting those in place.

Key high-risk issues were highlighted prior to the final findings to ensure that the firm could make conclusions without ongoing costs where risks were beyond the appetite of the firm.

Successfully delivered a full report supporting all findings and delivering advice on how to integrate the target firm effectively.

Areas of expertise

Business Model Analysis
Regulatory Environment
Product Governance / Pricing Practices
Quality Assurance

Testimonials

“The insurance industry is facing an unprecedented amount of regulatory change. Sicsic Advisory’s advice and approach has been invaluable in helping Admiral work through the complexity and implement big programmes at this time. Their approach is practicaland their expertise and support has empowered our own teams. As a new specialist consultancy, they are already making a big impact.”

CEO, large UK insurer

“Sicsic Advisory is our go-to, trusted advisor for conduct and prudential regulatory matters. Whether it is board training, providing SME assurance on high profile projects or preparing us for interactions with our regulators, Sicsic Advisory have the right people, knowledge and insight to guide us to the best outcome”

CRO, large UK insurer

“With unique insights drawn from both industry and regulator, Sicsic Advisory have become our trusted strategic advisors and provided a high calibre specialist alternative to the traditional consultancy firms. Their senior team brings a welcome blend of commercial and regulatory experience and a practical approach from designing frameworks through to implementation.”

CEO, large UK broker

Sicsic Advisory’s support for us with Regulatory and Compliance Due Diligence on numerous M&A transactions has been excellent. We value their technical expertise, their deep understanding of our sector and their ability to provide consistently pragmatic, credible solution-focused advice. They are a key enabler for our transformational M&A strategy.

CFO, large UK broking group

Get in touch

If you have any questions or queries we would love to talk them through.

Book a call with us Submit an RFP

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