How would you define culture? Many definitions include the words: attitudes, customs, beliefs, goals, values or behaviours, particular to a group of people or a community.

In the context of a firm, culture often gets segmented into different aspects depending on the topic in hand eg ‘customer service culture’, ‘quality culture’, ‘risk culture’, ‘reward culture’, ‘change culture’, ‘empowerment culture’… the list goes on.

If you are a Senior Manager in a bank you now have the added incentive of the Senior Managers Regime (SMR) to make sure your decisions are the best they can be.

In October last year the FCA changed its approach regarding the contentious ‘burden of proof’ but the new criminal offence relating to ‘a decision causing a financial institution to fail’ still became law.

On Monday 7 March 2016 the Senior Managers Regime (SMR) and Certification Regime (CR) came into force. The first swath of firms in the regime have invested time and effort into meeting the new regulation but in the eye of the public, what has changed?

Citi was in the headlines this weekend for taking a stance on the ‘tough new banker accountability rules’. The FT reported that Jim Cowles, Citi’s EMEA chief executive, believes that the Senior Managers Regime should be applied to the individuals that specifically run European or EMEA business functions.

The regulators are committed to creating a culture of accountability within financial services with the implementation of the regimes and accompanying Conduct Rules - now being collectively referred to as the Individual Accountability Regime.

It seems that individual accountability isn’t recognised by all authorities as the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) deemed that Julian Assange was arbitrarily deprived of his liberty.

With the publication of two consultation papers this week by the FCA and PRA, the regulators are proposing rule changes to comply with the proposed removal of section 64B(5) of Financial Services and Markets Act (FSMA).

Today (31 December 2015), BBC Business News published an article headlined ‘Banking culture inquiry shelved by regulator FCA’ highlighting the comments made by Mark Garnier MP on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme regarding the FCA shelving plans for an inquiry into the culture, pay and behaviour of staff in banking.

In Policy Statement (PS) 15/30, the FCA set out final rules for the new accountability framework for individuals working in the UK branches of overseas banks (incoming branches).