Question 1
You are the compliance officer for a financial institution situated and regulated in Singapore, whose parent company is based in New York. The rate of growth of the firm you work for has been falling in recent years. The head office has therefore sent one of the senior sales directors to your office, with a mandate to increase sales. The sales director has reviewed your current product offerings and decided that the firm needs to introduce some new investment products. The first proposal is to launch a product that would be regarded as a
very complex investment product and this deviates from the usual, more straightforward, products the company has historically offered. You have been assigned to assist the sales director and you initially advise him that the proposal brings significant new risks and challenges.
The sales director wants to understand the issues and has asked you to provide a note that:
- Identifies the risks of distributing a complex financial product in Singapore.
- assuming the risks associated with this new product launch are understood and the firm decides to continue with the launch, takes each of the points you have identified in a) above and:
i. Identify the stakeholder responsible for dealing with the issues stakeholders will include, for example, legal, compliance, risk, audit, sales, and relationship managers
ii. Describes how you will inform the various stakeholders of their responsibilities and the activities required of them in applying the risk management processes
iii. Notes the specific risks and the risk-mitigation strategies and associated
controls that you suggest the various stakeholders should implement
iv. Describe how you will test and monitor the various stages involved in the
launch.