Taking compliance EAST - applying behavioural science insights to financial services

Financial services regulation is about encouraging or discouraging certain behaviours. While regulators tend to rely on inspections and enforcement to ensure requirements are met, these measures can be costly and often only address issues after failings have occurred. Proactive firms and their compliance officers are now turning to behavioural science insights to assist their regulatory programmes. Mario Menz shows how the EAST framework, developed by the UK Government's former 'nudge unit', can be utilised to improve employee compliance.

Dr Mario Menz (mario.menz@hotmail.co.uk) is head of Compliance and MLRO for Ghana International Bank plc, along with course director of the LLM Financial Services Law, Regulation & Compliance at London Metropolitan University.

In recent years, behavioural science has gained increasing recognition as a powerful tool for understanding and influencing human behaviour in various contexts. Behavioural science draws on insights from psychology, economics and other social sciences to understand the factors that influence human behaviour and design interventions that promote positive behaviour change.