Compliance Support and Review (Financial Services)

CGI supports financial services firms by strengthening the compliance operating model: frameworks, monitoring discipline, evidence quality, governance cadence, and management information.

 

We work alongside your internal compliance team (or build the function where it is still developing), and coordinate with appropriately licensed parties where formal regulated advice is required.

 

The difference is delivery: a senior accountable lead, limited intake, and a focus on controlled execution rather than a “volume consultancy” approach.

The global context reinforces why this matters. IBM reports that the average cost of a breach across all industries reached USD 4.88m in 2024, while the financial industry average was higher at USD 6.08m.

 

On top of cyber and operational resilience, financial crime and compliance resourcing remains expensive: LexisNexis has reported global financial crime compliance costs for financial institutions in the hundreds of billions of dollars, with significant regional variation. 

In our experience, issues cluster in a few areas:

 

Evidence quality in the client journey. The right process may exist, but file evidence does not consistently demonstrate suitability, appropriateness, disclosures, conflicts management, ongoing review rationale, or complaint handling.

Monitoring plans that don’t match the risk profile. Firms either test too little (and discover issues late) or test too much without focus (and drown in noise).

Outsourced dependencies. Platform, custody, introducers, advisers, and service providers introduce third-party risk. If oversight is light, regulators will treat it as a control failure, not a vendor issue.

Governance without decision discipline. Committees exist, but minutes, actions, delegated authorities, and escalation routes are not tight enough to stand up to scrutiny.

Why “policy libraries” and generic frameworks are not enough.

A bank-grade policy set is useless if it cannot be run by the business. Financial services compliance must be operational: clear ownership, repeatable controls, defined evidence, and MI that drives action.

 

This is why we align to recognised principles around the compliance function in banks (governance, independence, authority, and risk-based coverage), while tailoring the implementation to your size, permissions, client base, and jurisdictions. 

A compliance support and review engagement is typically delivered in two modes: a fixed-scope compliance health check, or an ongoing compliance support model. Both produce decision-ready outputs and a clear remediation plan.

Typical deliverables include:

A risk-based compliance monitoring plan. A pragmatic plan that defines the testing universe, sampling, frequency, evidence requirements, and escalation thresholds.

Thematic reviews and file testing. Targeted reviews aligned to your permissions and business model (advice/suitability, financial promotions, conflicts, complaints, AML/financial crime controls, governance, outsourcing oversight), producing a ranked remediation list.

Registers, logs, and evidence standards. Practical templates and workflows that tighten how breaches, complaints, incidents, training, conflicts, gifts and hospitality, and third-party risk are captured and governed.

Governance cadence and MI pack. A compliance committee rhythm that works, with MI that shows what matters: breaches and root causes, overdue remediation, monitoring results, training completion, and emerging risk.

Implementation support. We don’t just diagnose. We support delivery: owners, timelines, control design, documentation uplift, and tracking to closure.

You should feel comfortable because you are not handed off to layers of junior delivery, and you do not have to explain your business repeatedly.

 

CGI is smaller by design, which keeps accountability high and output quality consistent.

 

We combine UAE pace and pragmatism with tenured global experience across regulated environments, and we work as a complement to existing teams and professional advisers when specialist sign-off is required.

If you want a clear, regulator-ready view of your compliance posture, start with a discovery call and a document request list.

 

CGI can then propose either a fixed-scope review (with a prioritised remediation plan) or an ongoing support cadence aligned to your governance calendar and regulatory obligations.