The Ocreus team is excited to announce that we have changed our name to Pathlight Associates, and we have a new and enhanced website at pathlight.associates
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Introducing Ocreus
We are a specialist professional services firm providing consultancy and assurance services, particularly to the Financial Services sector.
We have expertise across a range of Financial Services subsectors, including:
- Investment banking and capital markets
- Retail banking
- Corporate and commercial banking
- Private banking and asset management
- Wholesale and retail broking
- Payment services and e-money
- Wholesale and retail insurance
- Life and pensions
Our knowledgeable and experienced team have many years of professional consulting and operational financial services experience.
We are committed to providing excellent client service and building long term collaborative relationships.
Current Hot Topics
Operational Resilience
Firms in scope of the updated operational resilience requirements embedded in SYSC 15A and PS21/3 “Building operational resilience” had a deadline of 31 March 2022 to identify their important business services, set impact tolerances for the maximum tolerable disruption and identify any vulnerabilities in their operational resilience. Firms in scope include banks, building societies, insurers, and PSPs / EMIs.
This requirement puts a significantly different lens on operational resilience compared to more traditional contingency planning. For more information, please contact us.
Safeguarding Audits
The FCA now requires all firms subject to FCA regulation under FSMA (including AEMIs and APIs) and which are required to have an external audit of their financial statements (under CA 2006 ss475-476) to obtain “safeguarding audits”, providing an opinion (addressed to the regulated firm) on:
- Whether the firm has maintained organisational arrangements adequate to enable it to meet FCA expectations of its compliance with the safeguarding provisions of the EMRs/PSRs throughout the audit period; and
- Whether the firm met those expectations as at the audit period end date.
For more information, see our special purpose assurance reviews page.
Bank Due Diligence on MSBs and PSPs
Banks providing services to MSB and PSP clients are increasingly requiring independent reviews of financial crime frameworks are part of the onboarding or periodic review process. For more information, see our special purpose assurance reviews page.