Over the past year, the payments industry has been evolving and expanding, with digital payment services and transaction volumes growing across the globe. The competitive landscape is being redefined by the entry of non-traditional providers, the evolution of new solutions provided by financial institutions and the development of strategic alliances that cross traditional sectoral boundaries. Over and beyond this transformation, there will also be major convergence around: products and solutions linked to payments; technology platforms and clearing capabilities that will be increasingly global in nature and reach; and of the operation of global securities and currency markets. In addition, we are likely to see integration of regulatory regimes that today are still often fragmented.

To discuss these issues and more, City & Financial is running its professional virtual roundtable series on Payment Systems Regulations and Innovation, next 3-5 June. This series comprises five webinars, which will cover all aspects of payments innovations, including the regulatory framework, in the context of the new challenges brought on by the current global crisis.

A joint advisory statement published in April by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and the US Department of Homeland Security, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, shows that cyber criminals and advanced persistent threat (APT) groups are targeting individuals and organisations with a range of ransomware and malware. It is expected that the frequency and severity of COVID-19 related cyber-attacks will increase over the coming weeks and months.

Against this background, City & Financial Global is pleased to announce this virtual roundtable series.  The programme has been designed to address the key issues that have been identified as being of most concern to your organisation during this period of increased cybercrime activity. You will receive practical advice on how to prevent COVID-19 related and other malicious cyber activity and how to deal with the incidents if they have already happened.

City & Financial Global is running its professional webinar series on Operational Resilience, built on the success of 6 preceding annual conferences and summits.

This series comprises five webinars, which will cover operational resilience practicalities in the context of the new challenges faced in the current crisis.

The City Week Covid-19 Webinar Series brings together top regulators and c-suite executives from banks, asset managers and insurers for an authoritative and informed discussion on the critical issues facing the FS industry as a result of the crisis.

Book today via email at bookings@cityandfinancial.com

This forum will provide an in-depth analysis of the key issues facing M&A today, and will include keynote addresses from Colin Raftery, Senior Director, Mergers at the Competition & Markets Authority, and Simon Lindsay, Director General of the Takeover Panel.

This summit will feature a keynote address from Mark Steward, Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight at the FCA who will provide much needed guidance and clarity on how you can reduce the likelihood of facing regulatory action and mitigate the impact of it on your organisation and senior managers. It will address the tools available to you when faced with enforcement action including the latest focus resolution procedures allowing you to challenge the severity of the penalty while admitting liability.

This high-profile forum builds on the success of the previous related events that City & Financial Global and its partners have held. For instance, the inaugural Women in Finance Summit, which took place on the 24 January 2017 and attracted 250+ senior FS industry delegates, government officials and regulators from the UK and beyond.

The summit will bring together leading experts to provide a cross-cutting view of the emerging regulatory and ethical standards for data analytics, processing and management; to examine the data-related developments of most concern to regulators; and to discuss the fundamental changes that lie ahead. The event will also enable c-suite executives to benefit from real life case studies and best practices in the use, collection and sharing of data.

With keynote addresses from Robin Jones, Head of Technology, Resilience and Cyber, FCA and Lowri Khan, Director of Financial Stability at HM Treasury , the Operational Resilience in the Financial Sector Forum will focus on how to embed effective operational resilience and risk management practices in the rapidly evolving regulatory and technological landscape, whilst overcoming new risks and challenges linked to automation, innovation and digital disruption.

The 5th Annual event in London will feature a keynote from Jonathan Davidson, Director of Supervision – Retail and Authorisations and Member of the Executive Committee at the Financial Conduct Authority.

City and Financial Global’s landmark conference represents a unique opportunity for those at the forefront of the asset management community to gain insights into best practice in complying with the new regulatory standards. We are delighted to welcome Nick Miller, Head of Asset Management, Financial Conduct Authority as our keynote speaker. He will outline the FCA’s agenda for reform and their expectations for the asset management industry as a whole. Our panel of expert speakers will also provide practical insights into an array of challenges facing asset managers, such as  how culture and conduct has developed as a key compliance issue; the drive towards increasing engagement and transparency; improving disclosure on fees particularly in relation to active and passive funds; choice and use of benchmarks; and credible performance reporting. Asset managers will also be profoundly affected by coming within the ambit of the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR) this December, as well as by the ongoing turmoil which surrounds Brexit.
Attending this Summit will enable you to drill down into the implications of these radical events for your firm and provide you with practical tools and strategies to ensure you are at the vanguard of regulatory compliance.

The summit will bring together leading experts to provide a cross-cutting view of the emerging regulatory and ethical standards for data analytics, processing and management; to examine the data-related developments of most concern to regulators; and to discuss the fundamental changes that lie ahead. The event will also enable c-suite executives to benefit from real life case studies and best practices in the use, collection and sharing of data.

• Overview: is shareholder activism is growing in the UK?
• Why are investors becoming more active?
• Why would an activist target your company?
• Current activist behaviour and techniques
• Getting your house in order – how to minimise the risk of an activist approach and limit any damage caused
• Successful strategies for engaging with an activist
• The growing importance of ESG

We are delighted that David Blunt, Head of Conduct Specialists, Financial Conduct Authority, has confirmed that he will give a keynote address at the conference.

The forthcoming summit, which builds on the success of the four previous summits that City & Financial has organised on the SMCR, focuses on the key issues that all regulated firms need to get to grips with, whether they are asset managers and insurers who are finalising their implementation projects prior to coming within the ambit of the SMCR, or banks that are already within scope. The summit will address the needs of senior executives in all FCA and PRA regulated firms.

The 23rd World Conference of Banking Institutes will be a landmark event for the international financial services community – bringing together perspectives from across the world on the forces shaping the future of our sector.

Matthew Taylor will be one of many eminent speakers taking part in City & Financial’s highly topical summit on Employment Status in the New Economic Era. This will be your opportunity to hear directly from those at the heart of some of the recent court decisions, including Addison Lee, Pimlico Plumbers, Uber and Deliveroo. We are particularly pleased that Chris Jeans QC of 11KBW will be on hand to guide you through the complexities of these decisions.  Equally important is the issue of tax status and in particular the extension of IR35 to private sector contractors which for the first time will shift the tax burden to the organisation for which they work. Bill Dodwell, Tax Director, Office for Tax Simplification will share his thoughts on this and on their work on Platforms, the Platform Economy and Tax Simplification.

We are delighted that Kit Malthouse MP, Minister of State for Housing will deliver a keynote address.

At a time when the housing crisis is at the top of the political agenda, this highly topical summit brings together an exceptional speaker panel of top housing experts, who will share their insights on the future for the UK housing sector and how to reach the government’s target of 300,000 new houses each year.

Draft Guidance issued by the CMA at the end of January goes some way to explain how enforcement will be affected post-Brexit. However, this event will offer you an opportunity to hear direct from the CMA on what this means in practice. We are delighted to welcome Michael Grenfell, Director of Enforcement, Joel Bamford, Senior Director Mergers and Howard Cartlidge, Senior Director Cartels to the speaker panel to provide key insights into the CMA’s agenda for the future of competition regulation. They will be joined by a host of competition law specialists from leading organisations such as HSBC, British Airways and Shell who will give a holistic view of how these dramatic changes will affect all industry sectors.

This high-profile forum builds on the success of the first Women in Finance Summit held at Bloomberg’s headquarters in January 2017, the second edition of the same event held in March 2018 and the Vote 100 Women Summit, held in London last April, at which a member of the British Royal Family, HRH the Countess of Wessex, was a keynote speaker and participant. Each of these three events attracted 250+ senior delegates.

The Summit will be the official launch of the final report from the Technology and Law Commission investigation into the use of AI in the justice system, a collaborative programme which has drawn together the insights from industry, academia, political science, civil society, law enforcement and regulators. It will also look towards the wider impacts of AI on the legal system, including future skills, impacts on legal services, business models and the future role of businesses in society.

Now in its ninth year, City Week is the premier gathering of the international financial services community. It brings together policy makers and senior industry representatives from around the globe to consider together the future of financial markets and London, in particular. It consists of two days of cutting-edge conferences, seminars and networking opportunities, with other satellite events being held later during the week.

Against the backdrop of renewed determination at the federal and state level to address the infrastructure crisis in the U.S., City & Financial Global’s P3 Policy and Delivery Summit, which is being held at the exclusive Cosmos Club in Washington D.C. on May 14th and 15th, will be a key gathering for senior members of the U.S. and international infrastructure community.

In December, the UK Government published its proposals for a new skills-based immigration system, which ministers describe as the biggest shake-up in immigration policy in the last forty years. The consultation paper envisaged that the new system would come into effect at the end of the transition period under the Prime Minister’s proposed EU exit deal, which would be January 2021. However, given the uncertainty surrounding that deal and the likelihood of at least a three-month extension of Article 50, it could come into effect at the end of June, if the UK and EU were not able to agree a deal by the end of a short extension. The objective of the briefing is to analyse in depth the implications of the proposed new immigration scheme for the firms in this industry.

This high-profile forum will discuss key opportunities and challenges for the national energy mix and will explore further expansion of renewable and nuclear energy, storage infrastructure and gas.

Phil Graham, Chief Executive, National Infrastructure Commission, will be giving a keynote address.

After 16 years, City & Financial Global is pleased to present its first virtual iteration of The UK Sustainable Infrastructure Policy & Investment Online Summit. This event has established itself as the leading conference of its kind. The 2020 Summit, which is being held on 13-14 July, will provide a perfect opportunity for an in-depth analysis of the government infrastructure plans for the coming years and their implications for both the public and private sectors, as well as reviewing other relevant developments.

Recent weeks have seen a flurry of activity around proposed reform of the audit sector and its regulation. The Kingman Review, the CMA Market Study, the current investigation by the BEIS Committee and the proposed Brydon Review are all helping focus attention on the dominance of the Big Four and the role of the Financial Reporting Council.

The purpose of the conference is to look at the case for audit reform in the UK in the light of all the various reviews. High level representatives from all the stakeholders concerned will be on the speaker panels and we are delighted that Sir Donald Brydon has agreed to give a keynote speech.

On March 29, the new UK Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act will come into force. This conference will focus on the impact on corporates and financial institutions; examine the implications for enforcement and litigation issues and aim to give practical guidance.

With a keynote speech by Matthew Wagstaff, Head of Bribery and Corruption, The Serious Fraud Office,  this forum will help you identify the best strategies to manage regulatory and internal investigations and will help you understand both the technical and legal requirements of multiple jurisdictions, as well as the practical concerns and investigative methods used by government regulators and criminal prosecutors.

City and Financial Global’s UK EV Infrastructure Summit will discuss a number of opportunities and challenges which will emerge during the transition to zero emission vehicles.

Join us on Thursday, 29th November in London to hear insightful presentations from, and informed debates among, senior government representatives and leading industry experts on the subjects that will shape both the present and the future of the EV industry.

The Cryptocurrency Task Force, which was set up by the Chancellor in April, will deliver its Report in the Autumn. The Task Force is led by HM Treasury, the FCA and the Bank of England. It’s deliberations will result in proposals as to how the UK should regulate this dynamic but highly controversial new medium of exchange. This conference aims to give a forum for discussion of the report.

The 2nd Annual Blockchain FS Technology Forum, which will take place in London on November 7th, will address blockchain technology from a user-led point of view and will analyse its potential for the financial services industry – particularly its infrastructure – in the UK and beyond.

The forthcoming summit, which builds on the success of the three previous summits that City & Financial has organised on the SMCR, focuses on the key issues that all regulated firms need to get to grips with, whether they are asset managers and insurers who are finalising their implementation projects prior to coming within the ambit of the SMCR, or banks that are already within scope. The summit will address the needs of senior executives in all FCA and PRA regulated firms.

David Blunt, Head of Conduct Specialists, Financial Conduct Authority, has confirmed that he will give a keynote address.

The 4^th Annual Culture and Conduct Forum builds on the success of the three previous editions. Dr Andrew Bailey, Chief Executive of the Financial Conduct Authority will be opening this prestigious forum in the morning with a fireside chat and keynote addresses will be given by the Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Charles Bowman and Kevin Stiroh, Executive Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

“This year’s conference, the 38th in the series, will provide a forum for discussing all aspects of the Code. In doing so, it will assist practitioners and their advisers in keeping up to date with the regulation of takeovers and other transactions involving corporate control in the UK”.

Simon Lindsay, Director General, The Panel on Takeovers and Mergers

The UK Robo Advice and Digital Wealth Summit will be invaluable for both incumbents and start-ups that want to know how to adjust their business models to take full advantage of the significant opportunities presented by robo-advice and digital wealth management.

Anna Wallace, Head of Department, Innovate, Financial Conduct Authority will be delivering a keynote address at this event.

This year’s conference will be opened by Lyndon Nelson, Deputy CEO & Executive Director, Regulatory Operations and Supervisory Risk Specialists, Prudential Regulation Authority. His keynote speech, “Setting the right expectations for operational resilience”, will focus on the joint discussion paper on this topic that has just been published by the Bank of England, PRA and FCA.

This summit conference will be the twelfth in this series and is firmly established as the leading event in this field.  It will examine the detailed challenges and it will try to take both a short and long term view.

The purpose of this conference is to pull together discussion of all these forces for change and assess their impact for insurance, life insurance and reinsurance companies.

We are delighted that David Rule, Executive Director of Insurance and Supervision for the Bank of England will be giving the keynote address.

Since rising to prominence in 2015, RegTech has continued to bring considerable benefits to the financial services industry, primarily by reducing the cost and complexity of compliance and by addressing an existing technology gap.

The RegTech Automation and Compliance Forum 2018, which builds on the success of last year’s inaugural event, will present strategies and examples of best practice that will help financial institutions to gain competitive advantage by mastering compliance through automation and innovation.

Now in its eighth year, City Week is the premier gathering of the international financial services community. It brings together industry leaders and policy makers from around the globe to consider together the future of global financial markets and London, in particular. It consists of two days of cutting-edge conferences, workshops, social events and networking opportunities, with other satellite events being held later during the week.

To celebrate the centenary of the 1918 “Representation of the People Act’, this summit is being organised in partnership with the Government Equalities Office and the Women’s Business Council, and will look at the most important issues facing UK business, including diversity issues, and review how female leadership has changed over the last century.

The purpose of this conference will be to ascertain what is likely to be best practice in open banking by examining the regulatory environment; the bank/fintech interface; payments control; the opportunities and threats presented by GDPR; the balance of innovation and consumer protection and the concept in relation to the financially vulnerable.

This highly topical event is being organised in partnership with the National Infrastructure Commission and theInfrastructure & Projects Authority, both of which are running their own one-hour long panel sessions within the programme. The NIC session will focus on the National infrastructure Assessment, while the IPA panel will look at transforming infrastructure performance.

The conference will examine the role of the Government and financial regulators in addressing the imbalance of seniority between genders and determine what can be done to identify the barriers to women entering and progressing in the financial services sector.

This summit will assist firms with this process. It will be highly interactive event and will incorporate the use of ‘Slido’ technology to facilitate audience participation in terms of posing questions and suggesting areas that speakers should address in their presentations. The objective is to make the event very practical so that delegates can get the answers to their specific questions.

This summit will provide companies with a practical, actionable guide to improving their productivity through innovation.

The event will provide an overview of the political and legal concerns with the Bill, as well as a comprehensive analysis of the practical implications for UK businesses, including an assessment of how businesses can influence the content of the Bill, and the content of delegated legislation which may affect the regulation of their sector.

Since the Market Abuse Regulation came into effect in the UK in July 2016, the FCA has made clear that it is focusing on firms’ systems and controls to prevent market abuse, and that it places as strong an emphasis on identifying weaknesses in regulated firms’ controls as it does in pursuing the abuse itself.

This conference, the seventeenth in the series, aims to alleviate the challenges through a mixture of presentations and interactive panel sessions from policy makers, industry practitioners and leading experts in the field.

FCA’s business plan highlights firms’ culture as top issue – hear from Sir Win Bischoff, Lord Blackwell, Edward Bonham-Carter and Alison Cottrell.

This timely and highly-topical conference will enable attendees to understand how to make their robo-advice operations grow and become profitable, both in the UK market and in the international arena.

Its interactive format will offer you an opportunity to participate in a diverse and well-informed dialogue between the UK regulator and financial services c-suite representatives.

This exclusive event will focus on the LGBT community and the vital role that it plays in the success of financial services in the UK. The importance of LGBT issues has been much in the media recently, most recently with the Government’s proposed LGBT legislation, promised for this autumn. This highly topical conference will offer financial institutions a diverse and well-informed dialogue with industry leaders and government officials.

A Practical Guide to Completing Preparation in View of the New Requirements

This year’s conference, the 37th in the series, will provide a forum for discussing all aspects of the Code. In doing so, it will assist practitioners and their advisers in keeping up to date with the regulation of takeovers and other transactions involving corporate control in the UK.

This event is being organised in response to demand from the market following our successful summit on this subject in January and is being held shortly after the publication of the FCA’s consultation paper on how it will implement the extension of the SMCR.  Jonathan Davidson, Director of Retail Supervision and Authorisation at the FCA, will be giving the opening keynote address.

Senior representatives from the Bank of England, FCA, HM Treasury and The Cabinet Office will give keynote addresses in the morning. This forum builds on the success of the previous three editions of this conference, which all attracted 150+ senior FS industry delegates, government officials, regulators and technology providers from the UK and beyond.

The purpose of this conference will be to look at the Northern Powerhouse in terms of funding, skills, and housing. The aim will be to maximise interaction between panelists and audience to produce, by the close of the day, from three to five tangible actions on which local leaders can deliver.

This highly topical event is a unique opportunity for C-level executives across the UK and European energy markets to discuss a pathway for successful smart grid deployment, to examine how the structure of the electricity market needs to evolve to keep pace with developments, and to analyse the implications of existing innovations and future opportunities for incumbents, newcomers and investors.

Over the last four years, much has been said about the impact of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) which introduces significant reforms to the way personal data is collected, used and shared and is due to come into force in May 2018. However, in June 2016 the situation changed dramatically as the UK will lose the protection of the GDPR following Brexit meaning a new system will have to be put in place to allow the free flow of information between the UK and Europe.

Now in its seventh year, City Week is the premier gathering of the international financial services community. It brings together policy makers and senior industry representatives from around the globe to consider together the future of financial markets and London, in particular. It consists of two days of cutting-edge conferences, seminars and networking opportunities, with other satellite events being held earlier during the week.

This highly topical event, which is being held shortly after the Budget, is supported by the Infrastructure & Projects Authority.

The objective of the conference is to review any relevant budget announcements and provide delegates with an update on the latest government initiatives for infrastructure.

Until now EU policy has tended to dominate much of the debate about financial services remuneration in the UK. With Brexit, this will begin to change, and the regulatory environment outside Europe will need more attention, for instance.

Meanwhile Compensation, Rewards and HR managers still have plenty of new UK rules about which to worry, some specifically addressed to remuneration and some affecting it tangentially. In addition, there is a growing focus on socially related areas such as gender pay.

This conference will be the eleventh in this series and is firmly established as the leading event in this field. It will examine the detailed challenges and it will try to take both a short and long term view.

The government is proposing to extend the Senior Managers and Certification (SM&CR) regime to all sectors of the financial services industry, replacing the discredited Approved Persons Regime. The FCA has announced that the extension will take place in 2018.

The conference will bring together an expert speaker panel to discuss the latest policy developments, capacity generation issues and investment climate in relation to meeting the challenges of the UK’s energy market. The event will also discuss the possible implications of BREXIT, and what this means for energy policy and future investment.

On 8 November, HM Treasury announced that 93 firms across the financial services sector have now signed the Women in Finance Charter, which reflects the UK government’s aspiration to see gender balance at all levels across financial services firms. These firms have committed to promote gender diversity by implementing key industry actions as recommended in THE REVIEW into the representation of women in senior managerial positions in financial services by Jayne-Anne Gadhia, CEO, Virgin Money, published on 22 March.

After a long history of working with HM Treasury on a variety of successful high-level events, City & Financial Global is organising this event, hosted at Bloomberg’s headquarters.

Click the link below to find out more and to book.

This highly topical summit explores how best councils and the private sector can work together to meet the Government’s ambitious targets.

Insurance Linked Securities, closely related to risk linked securities and catastrophe bonds, are one of the fastest growing parts of the insurance market. But London has missed out on much of the business to date because the UK does not have rules which allow ILS to be issued, so it has lost out to other jurisdictions.

The recent Review of data-security, consent and opt-outs by Dame Fiona Caldicott, National Data Guardian of Health & Care has reaffirmed the challenge of information security across an evolving health and care system. The solution lies in successfully integrating people, processes and technology, which NHS Digital is supporting through an expanded offer for its many valued partners.

It has been widely acknowledged that blockchain offers an opportunity to reduce costs, to improve efficiency, to reduce risks and, overall, to provide a better customer service, which ultimately is what financial services need to be all about.

The Market Abuse Regulation only came into effect in the United Kingdom on 3rd July 2016, but, already, its far reaching nature has disturbed the financial community.

It has been one year and a half since Iran, The United States and five other world powers reached a deal designed to limit Tehran’s nuclear programme. As a result, the United Nations lifted all nuclear-related sanctions and the EU lifted many bilateral sanctions on Iran’s banking and energy sectors. Slowly but surely, progress is being made towards establishing normal trade relations between the UK and Iran.

Crispin Wright, Director General, The Panel on Takeovers and Mergers will be commenting on the impact of the latest developments in the market on panel policy.

This event will examine the latest developments in the cyber security issues financial institutions are facing, with particular emphasis on cyber resilience, cyber security culture, supply chain security and the protection of critical financial infrastructure, as well as risk mitigation strategies.

Culture and conduct remain top of the agenda not only for financial institutions, but also for the regulators, as Andrew Bailey, CEO of the PRA and shortly to be CEO of the FCA, made clear at our City Week event earlier this month.

City & Financial’s 13th Annual Infrastructure Policy Summit will bring together some of the key players in the UK infrastructure markets to discuss the latest policy initiatives and the implications of these for market participants.

Now that the EBA Guidelines on remuneration have appeared, the next issue is how they will be implemented by the UK financial authorities.

The bonds markets are now under attack from all directions. The purpose of this conference will be to examine the problems and then to look at the various possible solutions.

A blueprint for how £13 billion of government investment will help create the Northern Powerhouse was unveiled in September, £600m was added in the following Autumn Statement and a further £200m in the last Budget.

The EU post-crisis change agenda is designed to meet the G20 objectives, generate higher standards in governance and conduct, strengthen market transparency and integrity and establish a safer financial system.

Now in its sixth year, City Week is the premier international gathering of the international financial services community. It brings together policy makers and senior industry representatives from round the globe to consider together the future of financial markets and London, in particular.

The nuclear agreement has given Iran and Britain the opportunity to make a historic break with the past and marks the beginning of a new era in their relationship.

Building on the success of our inaugural scene-setting Capital Markets Union Summit last May, this event is the first in a series of ECMU implementation events

The purpose of this conference will be to examine the impact of the new competition powers on the various sectors of the financial services industry.

This highly topical event on Transaction and Trade Reporting Under MiFID II is part of a two year programme of events on MiFID II.

Following up on the success of the last year’s event we are organising The 2nd Annual Energy Cyber Security Executive Forum in cooperation with National Grid & DECC.