Regulatory time bomb ticking loudly - and nobody in charge seems to notice - Anonymous employee M&G plc Employee Review

Where do I even begin. M&G’s Financial Crime first line of defence is, without exaggeration, one of the most shambolic functions I have ever had the misfortune of working within. The management running these workstreams would struggle to organise a meeting, let alone a regulatory programme. The consultant dependency is staggering — and not in a good way. We are now on our fourth major consulting firm in four years. Four. The current incumbent is a Big 4 firm, parachuted in to fix the mess left by the three before them, and already showing every sign of repeating the cycle. When you need that level of external intervention that frequently, that isn’t a resource problem — it’s a leadership problem. And what leadership it is. The senior managers overseeing these workstreams are, to put it plainly, some of the most inept individuals I have encountered in a long career in financial services. No grip on the regulatory landscape. No meaningful oversight of the work being produced. No accountability when things go wrong — and things go wrong constantly. Decisions get made, unmade, and then made again without any coherent rationale. Consultants fill the vacuum because the permanent staff simply cannot.