Attitudes to Dishonesty: An Analysis of Financial Services Compliance Officers' Attitudes

Date01 March 1993
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/eb025623
Published date01 March 1993
Pages217-224
AuthorRowan Bosworth‐Davies
Subject MatterAccounting & finance
Attitudes
to
Dishonesty:
An
Analysis
of
Financial Services Compliance Officers'
Attitudes
Rowan Bosworth-Davies
Rowan Bosworth-Davies
After reading
for
the Bar
at
the Middle
Temple, Rowan Bosworth-Davies joined
the Magistrates Courts service as a clerk
to the justices
in
1971.
Ten years service
in the Metropolitan Police where, as
a
fraud squad officer,
he
studied at the
Securities and Exchange Commission,
was followed by employment
as
Investigations Manager
at
FIMBRA,
where he obtained first-hand experience
of the timid British regulatory philosophy,
a fact which led him
to
accept the post
of
Fraud and Financial Investigations
Manager
at
Richards Butler,
an
international law firm
in
1988. In 1993
he
joined Titmuss Sainer
&
Webb in their
specialist Financial Investigations Unit
A
Master
of
Arts from Exeter University,
he
is an honorary Research Fellow in
its
Centre
for
Police and Criminal Justice
Studies and has published widely on
the
subject
of
regulation and financial fraud.
ABSTRACT
Compliance officers
are
those specifically
employed
in
financial services companies
to ensure compliance with
the
legal require-
ments imposed
by the
Financial Services
Act
1986, and
other relevant legislation.
This paper discusses
the
perceptions
of a
sample group
of
compliance officers
of the
relative seriousness
of
specific criminal acts
involving dishonesty
and the
implications
for
the
effective regulation
of the
financial
services industry.
The
data were gathered
during research
for the
degree
of
Master
of
Arts
in
Police Studies
at the
University
of
Exeter.
INTRODUCTION
The data on which this paper is based
were gathered as part of some research
into the attitudes of financial services
compliance officers towards the offence
of 'insider dealing', while the wider
study considered issues such as financial
practitioner attitudes towards 'white col-
lar crime' in general. This paper dis-
cusses the responses of the compliance
officers in the study to one particular
question, which sought to establish their
perceptions of the seriousness of a
number of illustrations of criminal acts
involving dishonesty. Their responses to
this question alone indicate that there
are good reasons to doubt whether there
is sufficient willingness to enforce finan-
cial service regulations among such
217

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