By Hol Thomas-Wrightson, 23 June 2025
Earlier this year ICA hosted a webinar looking at the challenges of finding and nurturing talent to create truly effective compliance teams.
Hosted by Roz Dixon-Burnett, Course Director ICA, she was joined by panellists Paul Asare-Archer, CCO & MLRO, Shawbrook Bank, Alasdair Fraser, CDD Lead, NatWest Boxed, Lynsey Moore, Managing Director and Co-Founder and Catherine Tieley, Executive Recruitment, Kind Consultancy, exploring what individuals at various levels of compliance leadership seek in their roles and teams.
Finding the right person
Dixon-Burnett invited delegates to consider the following candidates: Candidate A, who is knowledgeable about regulations, but struggles with adaptability and strategic thinking. Candidate B is a quick learner, great with problem solving and relationship management, but doesn’t have much compliance knowledge or experience.
From the learner’s perspective, this question has a definitive answer: Candidate B secures the vast majority of votes. However, Asare-Archer made it clear that reality isn’t always so clear cut. He considers that, while there is a belief that it’s ‘easier’ to teach technical knowledge rather than so-called ‘soft skills’, if an organisation needs someone who has that specialised knowledge, that can be the priority, with shareholder management or presentation skills something that can be developed over time. It’s about looking at an existing team, seeing where there may be skill or knowledge gaps and hiring accordingly. He emphasises that compliance is not one size fits all, and how there is space for everyone, as long as they are willing to adapt and develop their own range of skills over time.
Fraser agrees that different businesses and roles need different candidates to fit the existing structure. However, in a very fast paced environment, he acknowledged that Candidate B’s natural adaptability may be better suited, with the option of paying for an external consultant to come in and provide the technical knowledge.
He also emphasises that part of being a good candidate is also about being humble enough to ask questions such as ‘where can I find this information?’ and ‘can you teach me this?’. In big companies, some information isn’t going to be easy to find if you try to do it all on your own, and being honest with colleagues and managers about needing direction or support is not only going to get you there faster, but is going to lead to better working relationships. It’s important to be able to recognise your own weaknesses, know what you don’t know, and admit where you need help to develop.
Development and growth
Dixon-Burnett opened up the discussion to delegate opinions with another scenario, this time asking what steps they would prioritise to develop employees to minimise the risk of them leaving. The clear favourite was a structured career path with clearly outlined progression, opportunities for skill development and milestone-based growth, with the option of rotating them into different compliance functions for broader exposure being the only other real competition. However, while there’s little surprise that no one selected simply accepting that they will leave from the options given, Fraser raised how even with these preventative measures in place, organisations need to be prepared for the prospect.
Teiley endorsed a tailored approach to career path offerings, rather than providing a strict, assumed path for what an individual in a given role would want. ‘They may not want to move into a managerial role, and if they think that’s the only option your business is willing to consider, they may not feel incentivised to stay’ she points out. ‘Often… a big factor of why they’re leaving is because there is nowhere they can see where they want to go’.
Asare-Archer agrees that an open dialogue is integral. Leaders should outline their vision and expectations, hoping that they align with what the employee wants. It is also important for leaders to help their team feel satisfaction in doing well in such a difficult role. ‘I think the challenge of compliance, sometimes it can be quite a thankless task’, he reminds us. ‘So what I try to do is really think about, what does my team deliver? What is their contribution? And make sure we really celebrate success within the team.’
It may sound counter intuitive, but accepting that an employee may not stay with a business forever can sometimes be a good way of keeping them in the business longer. Leaders that invest in individuals, developing their skills and furnishing their CV, so that by being in that team, they are becoming more marketable, it leads to them being more engaged, and in turn, being more enthusiastic about staying.
Talent meets goals
Dixon-Burnett asked the delegates what they would prioritise to align acquisition for a firm whose five-year strategic plan features global expansion, investing in digital transformation, and adapting to evolving regulatory expectations?
This topic seemed to split delegate opinion, with an almost even spread between upskilling internal teams, focusing on cross functional collaboration, and building an agile compliance team structure, with only the option of hiring external specialists falling behind.
Once again, we see that it isn’t as clean a delineation as we might hope. Moore emphasised the need for a blended approach: to bring in experts to be successful with growth, but also to ensure staff are given the opportunity to upskill, especially as they already know the business and how it works. From a recruitment perspective, she also recommended making plans for changes: there may not be budget for growth opportunities right now, but looking at existing talent to earmark them for development if and when budgetary restraints are loosened sets a business up for success.
Asare-Archer looked at how the compliance landscape has changed. Gone is the heavily siloed approach, with technical specialists focusing entirely on one area. The compliance teams that have survived the changing world are those that have adopted agile structures, making them able to adapt to the shifting economic environment and to the changing needs of the organisation. Leaders should enrich their team members, develop their skills, so that every one of them has the ability to be a leader, so that they can act as cultural ambassadors and business partners that are adaptable to the needs of the organisation.
Fraser concurs with this, having seen a lot of older organisations that, despite having great teams, are unable to communicate and collaborate with their first line, working together to problem solve effectively when audits are failed, and so in the end are unable to prevent the organisation from facing fines and issues with customers.
Finding the right person
Each panellist had advice of their own for how to bring all these factors together into a blueprint for a high performing compliance team.
Tieley acknowledged that while there is no one-size-fits-all answer, she thinks the key factor is clarity. Clear strategy and vision, well communicated, gives a unifying end goal to work to, which in turn builds team culture. To get there, clarity of both team structure and individual role expectations allows for effective recruitment and interviews that set the candidate up for a successful career.
Asare-Archer added to Tieley’s thoughts about leaders needing to make the vision for the team clearly understandable, and added his own advice of three abilities that are, in his opinion, non-negotiables for a team. These are the abilities to:
- Be effective stakeholder managers – The most important part of the role is tearing down those siloes and engaging the business and stakeholders.
- Be collaborative – It’s difficult to get stuff done if people are not prepared to engage with you and listen, especially if you haven’t put the work into speaking the same language.
- Be curious – We don’t have all the answers, and you need to be curious enough to go and find them.
Underpinning all this, he re-emphasised the importance of a blended approach: within the team, there has to be a mix of abilities to be both technical and engaged, as well as being up for the challenge and to be inspired.
Fraser encouraged compliance teams to find ways to focus less on writing, and more on doing and taking ownership. Avoid being seen as a team that does nothing but offer information: get involved. Don’t just tell a customer due diligence team what they should be doing and consider your job done – go and work with them to ensure their interpretations are going to actually help them be compliant. By doing this, you can provide a second line of oversight and assurance, rather than just meeting the minimum for a box to be ticked.
From the hiring perspective, Moore reiterated the importance of looking at what gaps exist on the team, what the business needs, and what qualities a candidate needs for them to come in and meet those needs. But what they need from you is honesty about what opportunities you can provide, and about the time scales you can give them for their progression.
Finally, Fraser shared his advice to hiring managers and candidates alike. For hiring managers, he recommends inviting stakeholders, product and engineering managers to join interview panels. They offer unique insight into the technicalities of the role, and can give feedback that helps whittle down between multiple great candidates.
To the candidates themselves, he encouraged them to leave the granularity of their technical knowledge and experience to their CVs. An interview is better spent showing that you know the stakeholders you’re going to be working with, and for showing how your individual skills make you stand out from the crowd.
The full webinar – Developing talent and career pathways in compliance – is available to ICA members via our Learning Hub. For more information and to sign up to our upcoming ICA webinars, visit our events page.