Compliance tops the agenda

For those of you wanting to get a heads up on the post-MiFID environment, Basel II, the third Anti-Money Laundering Directive, what regulators may have in store for the hedge fund community or the next installment of 'MiFID-like' directives, Complinet is hosting its fifth annual Compliance Conference in London on the 6-7 February.

The conference program features some of the European Commission's and the FSA's leading lights who can fill banks in on the latest developments surrounding the MiFID Directive Level 3 (not so good news for those that thought MiFID had come and gone). The FSA's head of risk will happily share its vision of principles-based regulation and what it means in a post-MiFID environment, and why it is imposing so many fines for lack of compliance with Treating Customer Fairly breaches.

And if that wasn't enough to make any risk manager's head spin, there will also be sessions on how data protection laws and other regulatory requirements often result in competing and conflicting requirements (something I am particularly interested in). Do KYC requirements, for example, often conflict with firms' data protection obligations?

There will also be sessions on Basel II, the latest anti-money laundering edict handed down from on high, and leaping into the uncharted territory of principles-based regulation, which we know a number of financial service providers developed a distaste for in the run-up to MiFID's implementation.