​Compliance departments should not have to bear the burden of ensuring good culture and behaviour at their banks, the Financial Conduct Authority's director of markets said to a gathering of buy-side and sell-side market professionals. Setting the right tone was the job of firms' boards and senior front-line management, he stressed. "When I talk to compliance people in firms they often give the impression – or sometimes explicitly say — that they are tasked with the challenge of ensuring that firms behave well," David Lawton told ICI Global's annual Trading and Market Structure conference in London. "Clearly, having compliance professionals who are on the ball is important. But actually, the place where the appropriate behaviour starts is in the front office; on the front line: thinking about product design, thinking about client engagement, thinking about trader behaviour. It shouldn't be the responsibility of compliance to set firms in the right frame."

Peter Elstob, Compliance Complete