Stuart O’Sullivan

Stuart is an Associate Director working on engagements where his subject matter expertise is required. Stuart started his financial services career at the FSA where he worked in supervision and authorisation and he has 17 years experience as a regulatory consultant, 13 years with Huntswood and subsequently with Protiviti providing strategic advice and solutions to clients and senior managers operating in the UK industry.  

Major Projects

• Various Conduct Risk Projects – Stuart is a Retail Conduct Risk SME and specialises in projects where customer issues are at their heart. He has experience of work across the whole product lifecycle as well as having delivered several projects from a Strategy, Governance, Systems and Controls and Oversight perspective, including projects relating to the Senior Managers & Certification Regime (SMCR). 
• Skilled Person Reviews  – Stuart has led the delivery of Skilled Person Reviews across multiple sectors and covering many customer, governance and risk management issues. The majority of these have been in relation to crystallised Conduct Risk or gaps identified in governance and control frameworks.  He is experienced at working with both the FCA, PRA and clients to achieve the right outcome. He takes a pragmatic and proportionate approach, trying to bridge the gap between regulator and regulated.
• Skilled Person Reviews, Consumer Lending Sector – Stuart has recently led the delivery team on two Skilled Person Reviews for Lenders in the High-Cost Credit portfolio sector. These reviews were both focused on creditworthiness assessments and how firms should have changed them in November 2018 to recognise the increased requirements. One of the reviews was also into the area of Collections and Recoveries and Forbearance.
• SYSC, Governance and SMCR – Stuart is a SME in relation to SYSC, Governance and SMCR matters. He has advised a number of clients in relation to senior management arrangements and governance and controls within firms and has conducted specific implementation and review work in relation to SMCR. This has included working with UK Banks and Insurers in the initial roll out of the Senior Managers Regime and the subsequent application to the wider industry, training and upskilling senior managers in role or new to role in relation to the regulatory expectations of SMCR and reviewing firms approaches to allocating responsibilities and approaching areas such as reasonable steps.
• Conduct Risk Assurance – Stuart was seconded to the Group Risk function of a top 4 retail bank to programme manage a group wide review of its approach to Conduct Risk across 4 workstreams: complaints management; sales process; product governance; and legacy issues. He undertook a number of actions which resulted in enhanced and improved customer outcomes from the four workstreams and the Risk Mitigation Plan (RMP) was successfully implemented.
• Governance Frameworks – Undertook implementation of compliance and conduct framework for a large UK and internationally vertically integrated Life and Pensions group. The project included - designing an approach to identify, report, and monitor Good Customer Outcomes. It involved engaging with the CEOs and senior stakeholders at the 5 group firms as well as reporting to and presenting at an ExCo level committee to provide advice and comment on the progress. Following the embedding of this work, a review was conducted after 12 months to review the governance of the ExCo level committee.

Areas of Expertise

• Conduct Risk
• Compliance Framework
• Consumer Lending
• Complaint Handling
• Remediation and redress exercise
• Outcomes based approaches

Industry Expertise

• Financial Services
• 8 years at regulator
• 17 years consultancy experience

Education

• BSc in Mathematics (Hull University)