UK financial services institutions act to prevent compliance failures, using mobile learning
16 July 2008 - A major bank's £6.3m fine in April 2006, following misconduct in its handling of share trades in two firms, has prompted one of the UK's major financial services institutions to use a novel approach - via mobile performance support delivered to its staff's PDAs and BlackBerrys - to provide 'nuggets' of regulatory and compliance-based information as well as key learning points related to data protection.
• Many organisations in the financial services sector - notably retail banks - reserve all of their network capacity, during working hours, for business operations. This leaves no capacity on the network for the vital e-learning programmes that are needed to keep staff up-to-date with regulatory and compliance issues.
• In order to prevent unauthorised access to confidential information, Financial Services Authority (FSA) regulations along with bank regulations, prohibit staff from using Bluetooth or other wireless networks with their laptops. Consequently, many staff in the financial services sector rely on BlackBerrys in order to send and receive email.
• Since so much of their working life is spent doing their jobs under intense pressure, staff in the financial services sector rarely have time to spend even 40 minutes of 'downtime' working through an e-learning programme.