Barclays Gets Into The Compliance Education Business

Mark Shapland

4 July 2014

UK-headquartered Barclays is branching out into the education business. It is opening up a Compliance Career Academy.

It has teamed up with Cambridge Judge Business School where all its 2100 compliance staff will receive training from philosophers and lawyers. The bank hopes to eventually roll out the course across the industry with participants receiving a certificate on completion.

The programme cost tens of millions of pounds to set up and seminars include titles such as “What is compliance” in which students can discuss issues around truth and trust.

“Strong and effective internal compliance is essential to ensuring banks operate in the right way. For the first time, the Compliance Career Academy sets a benchmark for compliance practitioners that I am confident will contribute to raising standards across the industry as a whole,” said Sir David Walker, Barclays chairman.

The move may appear somewhat ironic as the bank was hit two years ago with a £290 million fine for rigging LIBOR interbank rates and has also been involved in manipulating the gold and FX markets. Regulators are due to report in the coming months on possible reforms of how forex benchmarks are set. It has also been claimed that the bank falsified marketing materials to mislead clients into investing into a "dark pool" operation.

After the LIBOR scandal broke - leading to the resignation of chief executive Bob Diamond - the bank appointed former Financial Services Authority chief executive Hector Sants to head up compliance and regulatory work, seen as a key attempt by the firm to put its house in order. However, Sants resigned less than a year later, citing health-related stress.