Fiona Richardson joined Cleveland & Co in 2020 as our Head of Regulation to advise our clients on various regulatory obligations. She oversees work on FCA Rules, MiFID II, UCITS directives, Benchmark Regulations, AIFMD, Shareholders Rights Directive as well as assists clients with drafting fund offering/marketing documents to ensure compliance.
Fiona is the UK’s foremost regulatory expert with over 25 years of experience spanning a range of regulatory regimes and business models. She is well-known and trusted implicitly by her clients and the industry at large. She is a subject matter expert in the FCA rules and EU financial services regulation having worked at the FCA and supervised the full breadth of financial services providers. Fiona’s previous roles include head of regulatory development at a leading investment manager and more recently, executive director at a regulatory consultancy firm leading their technical team on complex regulatory issues and developments on a global scale, in addition to setting up and supporting their Singapore, Hong Kong and US offices.
She has an ability to resolve complex regulatory matters in a pragmatic and commercial manner whilst maintaining a strong focus on the technical details and managing regulatory risk. When Fiona isn’t setting the bar for unparalleled expertise in the sector, you can find her scuba diving all over the world or camping in her purple VW campervan.
Fiona has developed deep and expert regulatory knowledge across the spectrum. This includes:
- AIFs and AIFMs
- AIFMD
- Broker arrangements
- Collective Investment Schemes
- Depositary Services
- Investment Governance
- Investment Managers
- Marketing and Pre-Marketing Rules
- Perimeter Advice
- Preparing and Submitting FCA Applications
- Private Equity Funds
- Prudential Requirements
- Real Estate Asset Managers
- Regulatory Investigation
- Rule and Guidance
- UK & EU Financial Services Legislation (including: Capital Adequacy, Consumer Duty, MiFID II, Remuneration Rules, SFDR).
Fiona has worked with many sectors, these include:
- Advisers
- Banks
- Brokers
- Consumer Credit Providers
- Custodians
- Hedge Funds
- Insurers
- Investment Managers
- Mortgage Providers
- Private Equity funds
- Real Estate Investment Managers
- Unit Linked Funds
- Wealth Managers
- Aviva Investors, Head of Regulatory Development: Responsible for both influencing prospective regulatory change, facilitating implementation, and for the provision of technical regulatory interpretation to both the business and compliance team. Accountable, successful implementation of major regulatory change projects including MiFID and AIFMD.
- Bovill, Executive Director: Responsible for leadership and support on complex regulatory issues, s166 oversight, regulatory developments, client solution development and quality assurance across the whole group. As a board member, developed, challenged and implemented strategic change helping the company to grow from being a UK based firm with less than 40 employees to one that was more than double in size and operating in four jurisdictions.
- Financial Services Authority, Relationship Management Supervision Associate: Supervised firms both formerly SFA and IMRO regulated. These firms consisted of global institutional asset managers, hedge fund managers, venture capital firms and custodians, brokers, derivative traders, commodity dealers and spread betting firms.
- Friends Provident, Financial Adviser
- GE Capital, Compliance Manager: Compliance support to a life bond company and a newly authorised fund management firm.
- Legal & General Investment Management, Index Funds Compliance Manager: Provided compliance advice to the Index Funds and Transitions Management business. Redesigned the annual compliance monitoring plan across the firm to be both rule and risk-based and introduced thematic style reviews. Initiated LGIM’s engagement with regulatory developments.
- Nationwide, Compliance Consultant: Advice to and monitoring of the unit trust and real estate businesses. Provision of compliance advice, oversight of sales consultants and the development of compliance processes for the launch of Nationwide Life and Nationwide Unit Trust Managers.
- External Specialist on the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment’s (CISI) UK Financial Regulation subject panel.
- Previously, Fiona has chaired both the Investment Association’s General Regulations Committee and the Investment Compliance Committee of the Association of British Insurers.
- BSc Applied Economics
- English
Fiona Richardson joined Cleveland & Co in 2020 as our Head of Regulation to advise our clients on various regulatory obligations. She oversees work on FCA Rules, MiFID II, UCITS directives, Benchmark Regulations, AIFMD, Shareholders Rights Directive as well as assists clients with drafting fund offering/marketing documents to ensure compliance.
Fiona is the UK’s foremost regulatory expert with over 25 years of experience spanning a range of regulatory regimes and business models. She is well-known and trusted implicitly by her clients and the industry at large. She is a subject matter expert in the FCA rules and EU financial services regulation having worked at the FCA and supervised the full breadth of financial services providers. Fiona’s previous roles include head of regulatory development at a leading investment manager and more recently, executive director at a regulatory consultancy firm leading their technical team on complex regulatory issues and developments on a global scale, in addition to setting up and supporting their Singapore, Hong Kong and US offices.
She has an ability to resolve complex regulatory matters in a pragmatic and commercial manner whilst maintaining a strong focus on the technical details and managing regulatory risk. When Fiona isn’t setting the bar for unparalleled expertise in the sector, you can find her scuba diving all over the world or camping in her purple VW campervan.
Fiona has developed deep and expert regulatory knowledge across the spectrum. This includes:
- Compliance solutions
- EU financial services legislation
- FCA Rule and Guidance interpretation
- Perimeter advice
- Regulatory developments
- Regulatory investigation
Fiona has worked with many sectors, these include:
- Advisers
- Banks
- Brokers
- Consumer credit providers
- Custodians
- Hedge funds
- Insurers
- Investment managers
- Mortgage providers
- Private Equity funds
- Real Estate investment managers
- Unit linked funds.
- Wealth managers
- Bovill, Executive Director: Responsible for leadership and support on complex regulatory issues, s166 oversight, regulatory developments, client solution development and quality assurance across the whole group. As a board member, developed, challenged and implemented strategic change helping the company to grow from being a UK based firm with less than 40 employees to one that was more than double in size and operating in four jurisdictions.
- Aviva Investors, Head of Regulatory Development: Responsible for both influencing prospective regulatory change, facilitating implementation, and for the provision of technical regulatory interpretation to both the business and compliance team. Accountable, successful implementation of major regulatory change projects including MiFID and AIFMD.
- Legal & General Investment Management, Index Funds Compliance Manager: Provided compliance advice to the Index Funds and Transitions Management business. Redesigned the annual compliance monitoring plan across the firm to be both rule and risk-based and introduced thematic style reviews. Initiated LGIM’s engagement with regulatory developments.
- Financial Services Authority, Relationship Management Supervision Associate: Supervised firms both formerly SFA and IMRO regulated. These firms consisted of global institutional asset managers, hedge fund managers, venture capital firms and custodians, brokers, derivative traders, commodity dealers and spread betting firms.
- GE Capital, Compliance Manager: Compliance support to a life bond company and a newly authorised fund management firm.
- Nationwide, Compliance Consultant: Advice to and monitoring of the unit trust and real estate businesses. Provision of compliance advice, oversight of sales consultants and the development of compliance processes for the launch of Nationwide Life and Nationwide Unit Trust Managers.
- Friends Provident, Financial Adviser
- External Specialist on the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment’s (CISI) UK Financial Regulation subject panel.
- Previously, Fiona has chaired both the Investment Association’s General Regulations Committee and the Investment Compliance Committee of the Association of British Insurers.
- BSc Applied Economics
- English
