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Wealth Management Compliance Professionals


About

Exploring this Job

If the terms “asset allocation,” “index,” “mid caps,” and “blue chips” seem like a foreign language to you, then a glossary is a good place to start as you explore the world of wealth management. The investment bank UBS offers a useful glossary of WM terms at https://www.ubs.com/microsites/wma/insights/en/glossary-of-terms.html. Visit your local library to check out books such as Essential Strategies for Financial Services Compliance (John Wiley & Sons, 2015), which provides a detailed overview of the types of issues compliance professionals face every day. Another good resource is the ACA Compliance Group's blog, https://www.acacompliancegroup.com/blog. Talk to compliance professionals about their careers. Ask them the following questions:

  • What do you like most and least about your career?
  • What’s the best strategy for people to land jobs in the industry?
  • What’s the best way to network in this industry?
  • How is the wealth management industry changing? What can students do now to improve their chances of landing a job?
  • Can you recommend anyone else that I can talk to about career paths and the job search?  

The Job

Job duties for compliance professionals vary by employer, job title, and other criteria, but most perform the following duties:

  • overseeing the firm’s registrations and annual filings with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as state notice filings
  • developing and implementing a compliance risk management program that identifies and manages compliance risks
  • providing advisory support to wealth managers, partners, risk managers, and information technology professionals on regulatory rules
  • assisting in regulatory reviews—including internal audits, exams, and inquiries—to ensure that compliance procedures are followed
  • designing and overseeing compliance training programs for the firm’s employees
  • working with the legal department to identify and analyze emerging legal and regulatory issues
  • discussing current or emerging compliance issues with the firm’s management
  • maintaining databases of the firm’s compliance activities (such as complaints received, the firm’s responses, and investigation outcomes)
  • reviewing communications such as securities sales advertising to make sure that there are no violations of regulations
  • staying abreast of regulatory developments by reading industry publications and reports and press releases from regulators  
  • using reporting, compliance program management, portfolio monitoring, electronic communication archiving and review, and other software to collect information for regulatory filings and firm records