Regulators increasingly expect firms to treat workplace behaviour as a conduct and governance matter, while still complying with employment law requirements. This creates a dual-track challenge – processes must be fair and defensible from an employment law perspective, while also meeting regulatory expectations on culture, escalation and accountability.
Non-financial misconduct (NFM) is now firmly within regulatory focus and its scope is broad. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) defines it as behaviour that is not of a clearly financial nature, including bullying, harassment and violence. Where serious misconduct goes unchecked, it can harm individuals, firms and confidence in financial services.
The FCA and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) expect firms to treat workplace behaviour as a conduct issue rather than a purely HR matter. Although the FCA does not provide an exhaustive definition, its description of bullying and harassment is similar to employment law concepts, referring to unwanted conduct that violates a colleague's dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. Unlike the Equality Act 2010 definition, however, this does not depend on a protected characteristic. This broader framing creates potential mismatch risk for employers.
The Regulators' approach means behaviour such as bullying, harassment and discrimination can now directly affect an individual's status under the Senior Managers and Certification...
Pakistani actress and model Ayesha Omar has strongly denied a controversial statement falsely attributed to her on social media. In recent days, a statement circulated online claiming that the act...