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This paper provides a guide to a number of key areas of compliance for product providers and independent financial advisers. These include ensuring high standards of recruitment, sound reporting lines and a properly resourced compliance function and it indicates a number of ‘amber lights’ which may indicate potential problem areas. Finally, the paper suggests various ways in which organisations can check that they are complying properly and ensure they keep abreast of current regulatory developments.

The Securities and Investments Board (SIB) issued a paper addressed to self‐regulating organisations in May 1994 titled ‘Past Pension Transfers and Opt‐Outs: Model Guidance on Priority Cases and Complaints’. This set out in broad terms what product providers and independent financial advisers should start doing now in connection with past pension transfers and opt‐outs. This includes the criteria for identifying high priority cases and the guidance indicates what action should be taken to determine whether investors had been mis‐advised. The SIB paper sets the objectives for the exercise; the difficulty is knowing how to actually get started on the work. This is addressed in the following paper which describes the need to set up a project team to do the work, a computer database to analyse the information and the mechanism for identifying high priority files. A classification system is outlined together with details on how best to contact investors to obtain the best response rate with the most useful information. Finally, the issue of complaints is briefly addressed.

Information disclosure requirements are a relatively common feature of consumer protection regimes generally. In the case of retail investment products such requirements have been in place since the late 1980s. Now the European Distance Marketing of Financial Services Directive will impose a similar disclosure regime wherever a contract is concluded at a distance. But, despite the popularity of disclosure regimes with policy makers, the available evidence suggests that such regimes may not be particularly effective. The purpose of this paper is to discuss first, the extent to which disclosure regimes are underpinned by a solid understanding of consumer decision‐making behaviour, and secondly, the implications the development of the internet as a delivery channel for retail investment products might have for their effectiveness. The paper concludes that, despite the indeterminacy of consumer decision‐making research such that it fails to provide a ready model on which to (re)design disclosure regimes, the development of the internet as a delivery channel both compounds the challenges for the regulator in devising an effective disclosure regime, but also provides the regulator with an opportunity to explore the potential to deliver interactive capabilities which would enhance the potential to better influence consumer decision making. As such, the paper should be of interest to regulators, the industry (which has expressed doubts about the cost‐effectiveness of such regimes) as well as academics interested in regulatory policy.

This paper aims to illustrate the main changes during martial law for conducting financial intelligence (monitoring), in particular, in the system of combating legalisation (laundering) of illegally gained income.

The research methodology includes general scientific methods of cognition. The authors used it to research the theoretical, organisational and legal aspects of financial intelligence (monitoring) in normal situations and during martial law. The authors also use the doctrinal legal research method to analyse and describe the legislation connected to the financial intelligence (monitoring) during martial laws.

This paper is an original work written by authors that discusses financial intelligence (monitoring) during martial law. The following changes in the conduction of financial intelligence (monitoring) were highlighted: suspension of scheduled and unscheduled on-site inspections; postponement of the entry into force of the provisions of some regulations on the submission of reports in electronic form; and the norms amending to remove administrative barriers in matters of financial intelligence (monitoring) in martial law. The authors also noted that certain rules for the functioning of the financial intelligence (monitoring) system were being clarified. Thus, the financial intelligence (monitoring) regime is being weakened to some extent.

In connection with the introduction of martial law in the territory of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the most important changes that have taken place in the banking and financial sectors of the economy should be mentioned. In particular, this applies to the issues of the regulation on the statutory and regulatory levels. Certain vital points regarding the mechanism and procedures for conducting financial intelligence (monitoring) also needed to be changed, on a need-to-know basis to adapt to the needs of Ukrainian society during the military aggression of the Russian Federation. This paper is devoted to the study of financial intelligence (monitoring) during martial law. The authors identified the main changes in the procedure for conducting financial intelligence (monitoring) by both the National Bank of Ukraine (one of the main entities) and the legislator (by amending the current regulatory framework).