A conference on the United Kingdom's forthcoming Senior Managers and Certification Regimes will be held in London on 2nd December.

As readers know, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority have been at pains to play down the significance of the replacement of the ‘rebuttable presumption of misconduct’ with a new ‘duty of responsibility’. The conference will discuss this, along with the other significant announcement that the new regimes will now apply across the board to the industry as a whole.

Project teams are working on implementation at most large financial institutions, but there are only four-and-a-half-months left for affected organisations to ensure that they are fully compliant. Furthermore, the project teams tend to comprise compliance officers and in-house legal staff; there is widespread concern that senior managers are not as involved in the implementation process as they should be, given the enormity of the risks that they will shortly be running.

For all those who will fall under the aegis of the SMCR, or who are likely to do so in the future, this is topical. Tracey McDermott, who has acted as the temporary chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority since Martin Wheatley left under a cloud, will be speaking. The convenor is City & Financial.