Tag: Banking

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Corporate Compliance

Don’t be complacent with your corporate compliance

As a normal citizen, we deal with compliance every day whether or not we are aware of it. Every time we obey traffic lights and stop our car when the light turns red, we are being compliant with local traffic laws. When we stand clear of the train doors after a train announcement, we are compliant with safety regulations.

Compliance is everywhere around us and the workplace is no different. But how does this everyday action translate to the business world? What does compliance mean for a company and how can businesses ensure they are maintaining their compliance?

What is the purpose of corporate compliance?

The purpose of corporate compliance goes beyond following the letter of the law. A recent study cited that almost two-thirds of organisations believe that their compliance efforts helped reduce the legal cost and resolution time of regulatory issues and fines.

Corporate compliance is about prevention as much as it is about obeying the law. The right compliance strategy can keep your company out of hot water, protect your employee data, and keep your company out of hot water.

To better understand where corporate compliance comes into play, we have outlined a common example of corporate compliance failure.

Does that sound like something straight out of a Mission Impossible film? It’s not; It’s actually happening to Goldman Sachs. The company is accused of promoting a company culture that enabled two of their bankers to steal billions from the Malaysian government. The Goldman Sachs x 1MDB scandal is just the latest example of a financial compliance failure.

Corporate compliance is about control and consideration. Is corporate compliance the most interesting part of your business model? Of course not; but it is a vital component to the health of your business. Before you decide to innovate to try and get ahead, make sure you are staying compliant in the process.

For all your business and corporate needs give us a call on 0870 228 1999

or send us an email info@stanleycarter.co.uk or check our website for further details www.stanleycarter.co.uk

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Growing credit card conundrum fuels the British bank concerns

Britain’s banks are booking future credit card income long before it materialises, prompting concerns about the accounting practice among regulators, investors and analysts.

Riskier products such as credit cards have become more popular among banks in search of higher returns in recent years. In the first nine months of 2017, cards brought in 1.5 billion pounds in income for Barclays alone.

But how banks account for interest earned on zero percent balance cards, which attract consumers with sometimes long initial interest-free periods, is worrying some. Britain’s Prudential Regulation Authority warned that if banks are wrong about how customers will behave it could hit their capital.

Banks start booking interest income immediately after issuing the card, even though some customers may not pay any for years and could switch banks at the end of the interest-free period, before rates which can be as high as 20 percent kick in.

Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and Virgin Money have all offered such deals, while Royal Bank of Scotland, one of Britain’s major lenders, does not.

Under international accounting rules, banks predict how much income the card will earn in total, and then spread this out equally over the years they expect it to be active.

Forecasts are based on assumptions the banks set themselves, including how many customers they think will continue to use the cards after the interest-free period ends and for how long.

Interest income can also include upfront fees and interest charged on additional purchases.

Give us a call on 01612056655 or email us on info@stanleycarter.co.uk or check our website for further details www.stanleycarter.co.uk

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SME Bank accounts

Banks are looking for new revenue streams. Providing excellent service to SME customers is an opportunity often overlooked by banks. There are an estimated 4.7 million SMEs in the UK – accounting for 99.9% of private sector business. Can you afford to ignore this market?

Business customers don’t have time to fill out a time-consuming and complicated application and then wait days — or even weeks — to open a new bank account, or to repeatedly enter the same information into separate applications to obtain multiple products. If the process isn’t quick and easy from any device, customers simply decide to take their business to a bank that offers a more convenient and customer-friendly experience.

To date, banks have been unwilling to tailor their services to meet the specific needs of SMEs. By failing small business owners, banks are ignoring the opportunities of the lucrative business banking market. Large banks likely have upside available today for existing SME customers, adding a cross sell capability — to apply for additional credit, for example — would bring banks a significant upside.

The good news is anyone can adopt the best practices , proven by the success of top banks, to create a customer-focused acquisition and onboarding experience.

If you need help to open a business bank account email us your details to info@stanleycarter.co.uk or check our website for further details on www.stanleycarter.co.uk

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Stock Exchanges – An engine for development

Stock exchanges already exert a certain amount of regulatory authority over listed companies. Whether this authority is granted explicitly by the government or established by industry guidelines and operational codes, exchanges routinely require companies to report on certain aspects of their operation in order to qualify for the capital-raising opportunities afforded by the market. These reports are mostly focused on good governance, but trends lately have tended towards other indicators, such as climate risk and gender parity. Some exchanges (in Brazil, India, and Hong Kong, for example) have built these ESG disclosures into their listing rules; others have issued non-binding ESG reporting guidance to their listed companies.

The world’s stock exchanges are also useful and scalable engagement platforms. Their position at the nexus of so many key players allows for enhanced and accelerated debate across the entire investment ecosystem.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has collaborated with the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) on a new report, titled The Role of Stock Exchanges in Fostering Economic Growth and Sustainable Development. The paper does exactly what its title implies, examining how stock exchanges can promote economic growth and sustainable development.

Their joint report was launched at the recent WFE Annual Meeting in Bangkok, Thailand. Introductory matter covers how modern stock exchanges really operate, and why they offer essential solutions to long-term economic problems. A fair amount of space is devoted to a key concept: exploring the symbiotic relationship between financial development and economic development. In other words, does the development of financial systems and tools simply follow economic signals, or does it actually drive economic development on a grand scale?

Some argue that the markets may not always serve as organic drivers of long-term economic development. A fair amount of blame for excessive short-termism and other potentially corrosive market impacts is laid at the feet of exchanges, where extra volume can mean extra revenues. Day trading, excessive speculation, and technology-assisted boom and bust trends may create a disconnect between the real and the financial economies, according to the report, resulting in a misallocation of capital and potentially destabilising economic consequences. But exchanges more than counterbalance this by increasing the ability of entrepreneurs, as well as more established corporations with expansion plans, to access the capital they need to grow their businesses.

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Accounting and Banking for small businesses

What would you do if your business bank account was your accounting software.  This is the concept of an accounting bank and this combination of accounting and banking is set to revolutionise how millions of entrepreneurs run their small business. It will simplify your business administration duties.

With the advent of cloud accounting software and API bank feeds, many small businesses increasingly use the bank statement as the primary source of their bookkeeping records. A bookkeeper typically imports all bank transactions into cloud accounting software and then goes through transaction by transaction explaining the account code, VAT rate and contact information.

This is a duplication of effort that is inefficient. For example, when you set up a payee in your bank account and make a payment out, you then repeat the same task in your accounting software, setting up a supplier and explaining the payment out.

For startups, setting up a new business current account takes time. In most cases it’s several long paper forms and about a month of back and forth with different bank reps. Even then the account may not be approved. The lack of a bank account when a business starts trading often creates a mess as personal accounts are used instead.

It is the businesses run on spreadsheets who are set to gain the most from an accounting bank. Making Tax Digital, HMRC’s transformation of tax, is set to cause these business owners a significant amount of pain over the next few years as they are forced to adopt digital systems to do online quarterly MTD filings for VAT, income tax and corporation tax.

So how does an accounting bank help solve all these problems?

With an accounting bank a small business can go about its day to day banking, a task they want to do. The accounting bank comes complete with a UK bank account number and sort code that can be opened within five minutes and not 30 days. Contactless Mastercard, faster payments, direct debits and BACS are all included.

The accounting is automated with transactions being automatically categorised as sales, travel, legal fees etc. No longer is there the need for back and forth between you and your accountant over a messy spreadsheet. In fact the bookkeeping is no longer a task that you need to do.

Accounting banks have MTD built in to let the business owner carry on with their banking as you always have done, for their accountant to make the MTD submissions seamlessly from the application.

You can create an invoice and when it’s paid it will automatically reconcile. You can view a profit and loss report or submit a VAT return. An accounting bank does everything you need to run your business.

Steve Jobs described creativity as connecting things and you need look no further than Tesla connecting cars and batteries or Sellotape connecting glue and cellophane to see how simple but obvious these solutions are. Think of an accounting bank as HSBC and Sage connected as one.

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