Press Release: Bankhall Revolutionises Audit Services With Model Office Roll-out

Date: 23rd November 2023

Author: Sesame Bankhall Group

Bankhall, a leading provider of support services, is revolutionising its audit process with the roll-out of Model Office-MO® to its 800 directly authorised wealth, protection, and mortgage client firms.

MO® is a regulatory technology (RegTech) solution enabling retail intermediary advice firms to benchmark their business compliance activities against all relevant FCA regulations, with a fully automated gap-analysis and audit reporting process. A key feature of Bankhall’s MO® is the ongoing detection, analysis, and tracking functionality in line with the Consumer Duty outcomes of continual development, with users able to produce real-time reports at the click of a button.

Over the past 12 months, Bankhall has been working in partnership with Model Office to develop a bespoke version of the solution with input from 250 of its client firms. This latest move will see all Bankhall clients immediately having access to enhanced audit functionality more tailored to their specific needs, with the administrative time saved creating greater opportunity for one-to-one consultancy on wider business issues such as culture, clients, and strategy.

Linda Preston-Todd, Client Relationship Director at Bankhall said: 

“Our partnership with Model Office is a prime example of how Bankhall is investing in its services and revolutionising the traditional audit process, helping advisory firms to evolve for the future while ensuring they continue to get maximum value from our expert consultancy team. With the FCA becoming increasingly data-driven, utilising this software enables advisers to meet their Consumer Duty requirements more easily, while staying on the front foot with other risks on the horizon, from data protection to financial crime.”

Model Office Founder Chris Davies commented: 

“With an increasingly data-led regulator, support providers need to offer advisory firms the ability to scrutinise their compliance activities and data to ensure there is good and evidenced-based compliant practice and accurate audit reporting across all relevant FCA regulations. We are extremely pleased that Bankhall has adopted MO’s RegTech, providing them with digital and streamlined audit services, which gives them a significant advantage as a compliance support service provider. The software will streamline audit data reporting, saving Bankhall and their client firms significant time and costs and increasing data quality and management information in real time. This adoption of Model Office means we now have over 20% of the retail investment advice market using our RegTech.”

-Ends-

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About Sesame Bankhall Group

Sesame Bankhall Group (SBG) brings together Bankhall, PMS Mortgage Club, and Sesame Network, reaching over 10,000 professional financial advisers.

• Bankhall is a market-leading support services business for firms that are directly regulated by the FCA.
• PMS operates one of the UK’s largest mortgage clubs for mortgage brokers who are directly regulated by the FCA.
• Sesame is one of the UK’s leading appointed representative (AR) networks.

Services provided include compliance and regulatory support, access to one of the UK’s most comprehensive training and development programmes, in-depth product research, preferential PI terms and access to market-leading technology to enable advisers to write business more efficiently.

About Model Office

Model Office is a digital compliance regulation technology platform that benchmarks firms’ compliance and business development performance, providing strategies and guidance on complaint and professional practice. Through the Model Office diagnostic platform, wealth managers, financial advisers, planners and banking firms can keep track of new regulatory directives, relevant final guidance and discussion papers and the industry best practice research benchmarks.

Model Office streamlines regulatory reporting and potentially reduces compliance costs and time. Features include:

• Interactive regulatory heat mapped dashboards tracking all regulations with a radar chart, automated CPD certificate and compliance score performance dials.
• A unique algorithm that offers tailored steers, strategies and resources to help improve compliance and business development scores.
• An Artificial Intelligence Compliance Chatbot assistant that interrogates the FCA handbook and the internet to provide guidance 24/7.