Bank Conduct Risk for Compliance Officers Training Course

Course overview

Conduct risk failures in banking rarely begin with a single obvious breach. They emerge through product design decisions, sales incentives, vulnerable-customer treatment, complaints trends, disclosure weaknesses, conflicts of interest, and poor escalation of customer harm. Compliance officers must be able to identify these patterns before they become regulatory findings, remediation programmes, customer redress, reputational damage, or board-level concerns. This course equips participants to challenge first-line decisions with evidence, translate regulatory expectations into controls, and present conduct risk clearly to senior management.

Across five days, participants examine the conduct risk lifecycle for retail, commercial, and wealth banking activities. They learn to define conduct risk appetite, build a conduct-risk taxonomy, map customer journeys, assess product governance, test sales and incentive controls, analyse complaints and customer-outcome data, and investigate conduct incidents. The course applies FCA Consumer Duty and SYSC expectations alongside practical compliance-management techniques, including risk-and-control self-assessments, conduct KRIs, root-cause analysis, assurance testing, issue management, and management-information design.

Instruction combines expert-led briefings with realistic banking cases, data-led workshops, peer challenge sessions, and compliance committee simulations. Participants use structured templates to assess a conduct-risk scenario, document control gaps, prioritise remediation, and prepare escalation materials. Each participant leaves with a completed Conduct Risk Monitoring and Escalation Pack containing a customer-journey risk map, sample KRIs, a testing plan, an incident investigation record, and a 90-day workplace implementation plan.

The course is designed for compliance professionals who already understand core banking regulation and need stronger practical capability in conduct-risk oversight. It is particularly relevant where firms are strengthening Consumer Duty governance, improving customer-outcome monitoring, responding to supervisory feedback, or bringing inconsistent conduct controls into a more defensible framework.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Construct a banking conduct-risk taxonomy linking customer harm, business activities, controls, and accountable owners
• Map a customer journey to identify foreseeable harm, vulnerable-customer risks, and critical conduct controls
• Perform a conduct-focused risk-and-control self-assessment using likelihood, impact, control design, and control-effectiveness criteria
• Design conduct risk indicators and thresholds from complaints, sales, cancellations, remediation, and customer-outcome data
• Test product governance, financial promotions, sales incentives, and conflicts-of-interest controls against conduct-risk requirements
• Investigate a conduct incident using evidence logs, root-cause analysis, impact assessment, and remediation tracking
• Prepare concise conduct-risk management information for compliance committees and board risk reporting
• Produce a 90-day Conduct Risk Monitoring and Escalation Pack for application in a banking business line

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Compliance Officers — who oversee banking controls and need to challenge conduct-risk decisions with evidence
• Conduct Risk Managers — who design, coordinate, or improve firm-wide conduct-risk frameworks
• Compliance Monitoring Officers — who test customer-facing controls, record findings, and track remediation
• Financial Crime and Regulatory Compliance Managers — who need to connect compliance themes to customer-harm risks
• Product Governance Managers — who assess product lifecycle controls, target markets, and customer outcomes
• Risk Managers and Internal Audit Professionals — who provide independent assurance over conduct-risk governance and controls

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience in a bank, building society, insurer, or regulated financial-services firm, ideally in compliance, risk, audit, product governance, complaints, or operational control. They should understand basic regulatory concepts such as risk appetite, policies and procedures, controls, incidents, customer complaints, and management information. Familiarity with FCA Consumer Duty or comparable conduct-of-business requirements is useful but not essential. Participants should be comfortable reviewing spreadsheets and drafting short risk assessments. No legal qualification, advanced statistical knowledge, coding ability, or prior experience of specialist GRC software is required.

Training methodology

The programme uses instructor-led analysis of banking conduct failures, regulatory expectations, and practical control designs, followed by applied workshops each day. Participants work with customer-journey maps, complaints extracts, sample sales-incentive plans, product-governance papers, and incident records. Small groups assess evidence, challenge control assumptions, score risks, and present recommendations in simulated compliance and risk committee discussions. The final day converts learning into an individual implementation plan and a completed Conduct Risk Monitoring and Escalation Pack tailored to the participant’s business area.

Course outline

Day 1: Conduct risk foundations and regulatory expectations

• Definitions of conduct risk, customer harm, and non-financial risk in banking
• FCA Consumer Duty outcomes and their implications for compliance oversight
• SYSC governance, systems-and-controls expectations, and senior-management accountability
• Conduct-risk taxonomy design across products, channels, customer segments, and behaviours
• Risk appetite statements, tolerances, and escalation thresholds for customer outcomes
• Three-lines-of-defence responsibilities in conduct-risk management
• Conduct-risk event types including mis-selling, unsuitable advice, unfair treatment, and poor disclosure

Workshop: Participants build a conduct-risk taxonomy and draft appetite statements for a fictional retail bank.

Day 2: Customer outcomes, product governance, and controls

• Customer-journey mapping from product design through servicing, complaints, and exit
• Foreseeable-harm assessment and vulnerable-customer considerations
• Target-market definition, distribution strategy, and product approval controls
• Fair-value assessment evidence and pricing-related conduct risks
• Financial promotions review criteria and clear-fair-not-misleading communications
• Sales incentives, performance management, and behavioural-risk controls
• Risk-and-control self-assessment methods for customer-facing processes

Workshop: Participants map a mortgage customer journey, identify foreseeable harms, and document critical controls in an RCSA.

Day 3: Monitoring, data, and conduct-risk indicators

• Conduct-risk monitoring plans based on inherent risk, control reliance, and regulatory priorities
• Complaints taxonomy, trend analysis, and root-cause categorisation
• Customer-outcome data sources including cancellations, arrears, claims, call quality, and remediation
• Key risk indicator design, data definitions, thresholds, and breach triggers
• Leading versus lagging indicators for sales, servicing, and product governance risks
• Sampling approaches for file reviews, call monitoring, and control testing
• Microsoft Excel techniques for conduct-risk trend analysis and exception reporting

Workshop: Participants analyse a complaints and cancellation dataset, create conduct KRIs, and set escalation thresholds.

Day 4: Investigation, remediation, and escalation

• Conduct incident triage, materiality assessment, and customer-harm scoping
• Evidence preservation, interview planning, and investigation documentation
• Five Whys and fishbone root-cause analysis for conduct failures
• Customer redress principles, remediation populations, and validation controls
• Issue-management records, action owners, due dates, and closure-evidence standards
• Escalation criteria for compliance committees, risk committees, and senior management
• Drafting concise conduct-risk management information and challenge narratives

Workshop: Participants investigate a mis-selling incident, complete a root-cause record, and prepare an escalation paper with remediation actions.

Day 5: Assurance, governance, and workplace application

• Second-line compliance challenge techniques and effective first-line engagement
• Control design versus operating-effectiveness testing for conduct controls
• Assurance planning using risk-based coverage, thematic reviews, and follow-up testing
• Board and committee reporting structures for conduct-risk oversight
• Using ISO 37301 principles to strengthen compliance-management evidence
• Linking conduct-risk findings to policy changes, training, and accountability measures
• Ninety-day implementation planning for a conduct-risk improvement priority

Workshop: Participants present their Conduct Risk Monitoring and Escalation Pack in a simulated risk committee and finalise a 90-day implementation plan.

Tools & standards covered

FCA Consumer Duty, FCA SYSC Handbook, ISO 37301, Microsoft Excel

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions