Community Engagement at the Financial Conduct Authority

A key part of our corporate responsibility work is community engagement which aims to bring volunteering and consumer diversity to life. Our community engagement programme gives our people an opportunity to better understand the communities they serve through a number of initiatives, including our new Inspiring Futures programme.

We orient our thinking towards the consumer, so engaging with our local community helps to make their issues and the needs in those communities real.

 Our focus is to:

• ensure we give our people the chance to be involved in their community, linking what they do to their learning and development
• adapt our thinking towards the consumer, so we can better understand those using (or not using) financial services
• connect together what we learn with our core functions of financial regulation
• influence the industry to do the same, encouraging an active commitment to diversity and community engagement

The move to Newham represents an opportunity to take the organisation’s commitment to the local community to a new level. Inspiring Futures will be a visible and sustained demonstration of that commitment.

Our volunteering policy ensures that our people are able to take part in volunteering opportunities – whether in communities in London, Edinburgh or close to where they live.

Each year, over a third of our people undertake a range of community engagement activities. These include delivering aspiration-raising programmes to young people, using their business skills as school governors and trustees at local schools, and completing team challenges in local homeless shelters and community centres.

Our graduate scheme allows for our people to take part in an official charitable programme that spans their first six months. Their task is to develop a project that brings to life our operational objectives and our consumer focus.

The more we meet and listen to our consumers and share our learnings with our colleagues, the clearer our understanding of their diversity and challenges. Our internal network of corporate responsibility champions helps us to share information about our Corporate Responsibility programmes across the business.