“The Banking Standards Board has today (Tuesday 28 February 2017) published good practice guidance for banks and building societies putting in place procedures to assess the fitness and propriety of staff under the new Certification Regime. Download the Statement of Good Practice 1 on the Certification Regime: Fitness and Propriety Assessment Principles  and Supporting Guidance to Statement of Good Practice 1 on the Certification Regime: Definitions, Sources of Information and Assessment Record Template.

Recognising the opportunity presented by the new regime to help to promote professionalism across the banking sector, the BSB set up a member firm working group² to share experiences and facilitate the identification of good practice to help to achieve a fair and effective implementation. The working group met regularly throughout 2016, and following a three-month consultation process, the BSB is now publishing two documents: a Statement of Good Practice on the assessment of fitness and propriety within the Certification Regime, and more detailed Supporting Guidance on implementation. The published documents consist of:

BSB Statement of Good Practice – Fitness & Propriety Assessment Principles

This takes the form of a high-level set of principles surrounding the assessment of fitness and propriety and is designed to encourage and help firms to use the Certification Regime as a means to raise professional standards and ensure that F&P assessments are fair, consistent and transparent.

BSB Supporting Guidance

This is practical guidance, which represents a pooling of knowledge and experience by BSB member firms from which the whole industry can learn. It contains;

• comprehensive definitions of each element of F&P; honesty and integrity, reputation, competence and capability, and financial soundness
• potential sources of information that could be taken into account when carrying out the assessments
• example assessment record template to support consistent recording of the outcome of F&P decisions across firms.”