Our Head of Policy Andrew Pepper-Parsons recently attended a panel debate on Culture and Conduct in Financial Services – SMR, Working Practices and Emerging Cultural Concerns held by the Westminister Business Forum. Andy spoke about the challenge of embedding a better whistleblowing or speak up culture within the financial sector. He explained to delegates that what is needed is a combination of rules or laws that sanctioned those that didn’t meet certain standards, while at the same time showing organisations the real benefit in taking whistleblowing seriously. In short, best practice for whistleblowing arrangements needs the back up of the threat of sanctions if not adhered to.
On September 13, Andrew also had the opportunity to speak to the Insurance Internal Audit Group, at their September Quarterly Seminar. Andy introduced Protect’s 360 Benchmark which enables organisations to assess the effectiveness of their whistleblowing arrangements and benchmark their performance against organisations from their own sector. Organisations are increasingly coming under pressure from the law, and regulators to not only have whistleblowing or speak up arrangements in place, but to demonstrate they are working well in practice. The 360 Benchmark enables organisations to make these assessments and is the only whistleblowing tool available that looks at metrics beyond numbers.