The CEO of a funeral planning company must take overall responsibility in a top-down manner for effective compliance arrangements with regulatory requirements. In addition, senior managers within the organisation must ensure the firm has the required systems and controls.

This blog sets out some of the SYSC requirements that a funeral planning business must prepare for:

The Board and senior managers within a regulated business should take responsibility for the funeral planning organisation’s internal controls.

The company needs to be transparent as to how it will organise and manage its operations in an effective manner with regards to modern risk management techniques.

Senior managers must operate in accordance with SMCR (Senior Managers Certification Regime) this is discussed in a later blog.

The funeral planning organisation needs to create a SYSC system to address governance, monitoring arrangements, risk, compliance oversight, impartiality of process, management data, skills and competence, audit meetings, internal audit verification. Outsourcing, business continuity, conflicts of interest, data security and documentation and records management.

A quick look at one area such as Governance might require:

  • Clear organisation charts (required in SMCR).
  • Clear lines of responsibility and accountability and significant influence / harm
  • Effective and modern risk management procedures. A good Standard to obtain is ISO 31000 Risk Management guidelines.
  • Reporting of risks and mitigations
  • Internal controls document and highlighting risk areas
  • Strong accounts procedures with authority tables
  • IT systems documented, ideally following ISO27001: 2013.

The documentation of an effective SYSC system can come in a variety of formats. At Thamer James we can assist with development of modern web-based compliance systems, that allow for easy integration of various compliance models.

For further information and to book your SYSC survey please contact: Mo Arshad LLB LLM at Thamer James Ltd. Email: [email protected]

Mo has a specialism in FCA regulation and has worked with a broad range of financial services organisations including the funeral planning sector.  He has provided advice across the regulatory spectrum including the implementation of the Senior Managers and Certification regime, General Data Protection Regulation as well as guiding firms through the FCA regulatory approval process and associated notifications.

Mo holds a Law Degree, a Master’s in Law as well as the respected Diploma in Governance, Risk and Compliance from the International Compliance Association.