IF Webinar Chaired by Ed Goodchild

Ed Goodchild took the chair for Intelligence Forums’ webinar on 4 February 2021, which was attended by around forty members from across the country.

Fran Murray, Associate, Financial Crime, Rosenblatt, hosted the meeting. Working with agencies such as HMRC, the SFO and the FCA on high value fraud investigations her speciality is financial crime, but she reminded us that Rosenblatt is a full service law firm, which supplies a comprehensive range of legal services to its clients across the full spectrum of their business activities.

Fran introduced our first speaker, an advisor to Rosenblatt Law, Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe, who until 2017 was Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police Force. As the most senior police officer in the UK, with a budget of £3.6Bn and 50,000 people to manage, he was directly accountable to the Home Secretary. Supervised by parliamentary committees he had national responsibilities, which included leading counter terrorism policing throughout the UK and protecting the Royal Family and senior members of the government both at home and abroad. He was made a life peer in October 2017 and has since taken up his role as a crossbencher in the House of Lords. Amongst many other interests he is also a non-executive director of the Cabinet Office Board and the Home Office and noted how this was something of a role reversal having previously been its Client. 

Financial crime, he said, is a significant challenge. What is reported is the tip of an iceberg. However, what is actually recorded – an offence reported to police, even fully investigated only counts towards Home Office figures if it is "recorded" as a crime - is very small, so tends to have a relatively low priority. 

He reminded us that the police force is only one player in tackling financial crime. The other significant player, the banking industry, has valuable data and it is vital to share intelligence with them. Even though banks may be concerned at suspicious activity they may not have all the evidence needed to make a judgement. Communication is through filing Suspicious Activity Reports although now the number of these, can sometimes result in critical information being lost.  

Financial crime has become increasingly complex to solve. Criminal capital movements related to money-laundering, terrorism or corruption, are executed using the same online payment systems as legitimate commercial transactions, and criminals can  swiftly move capital across multiple jurisdictions, evading detection.

Organised-crime, on the other hand imports 90% of illegal drugs into the UK- opium from Afghanistan, cocaine from Mexico and Colombia etc. – however, payments in this illegal industry are far more cash based, which presents the police with another set of challenges.

On critical incident management, he said, any organisation, be it the police force or government, needs to prepare early.  Clearly the worst time to do so is on the day of the incident. 

To respond effectively to an incident you must already have determined the skill sets and resources needed to manage it. You may have many good people, he said, but it is vital to recognise their specific strengths.  In the Met, for example, there are 50,000 people working round the clock within the 32 London boroughs. Many good people under the command of excellent chief superintendents, but each has a different skill set. Some may be good at making quick decisions but not all are good at acute problem-solving, for example. 

Recognising this, the Met identifies and matches those with the necessary aptitudes to specialist units e.g. firearms duties, crowd management, sporting events etc. Each specialist unit is trained, and will go on exercise before taking on active responsibility, and during this process individual managers give and are given feedback. 

Management of complex operations also needs good reporting regimes. For example where policing operations require significant scale, it is critical for those responsible to meet beforehand to establish lines of communication and communicate the goals. It is just as important to carry out a review after the event, so that lessons can be learned and resets made. To be effective, those involved must be encouraged and prepared to give honest feedback, recognising that this can be stressful, and some might conceal the most open and honest answers. 

Lord Hogan-Howe was asked how often the police force is able to bring in criminals to help solve crimes. This simply doesn't happen, he said, although the police have sometimes use hackers to help develop their systems. Criminals are generally caught, he said, when the victim identifies the perpetrator, through informants or through police graft in tracking them down.

Jason Baker is CEO of Citrus Ornge Media (“Citrus”) which he founded in May 2018. He has worked for some of the biggest industry heavyweights including News UK, Emap, Conversant and Publicitas and has forged his experience and knowledge across all media channels to create Citrus.  He is passionate about all things media but most importantly about the challenges faced when rebuilding a life after addiction. This drives his company’s social mission, which is to help others wherever it can.

Jason said that while Citrus’ technical products and COVID provided him with plenty of material to talk to, he had chosen to highlight the company’s policy of employing ex-substance abuse offenders and addicts. Citrus is the only media business to have such a policy, and he believes that the subject should be on every corporate agenda. 

During lockdown there has been a 500% increase in calls to the British Liver Trust, and between March and September 2020, a 16% increase in alcohol related deaths. He fears that there will be more. He believes that the isolation and stress of working continuously from home means that some slip easily into a 5 o'clock drink - then a 7 o'clock drink and 8 o'clock drink habit. 

Jason has learned from experience. In his own words he “drank himself onto one of the 12 Step Fellowship programs (“12SFP”), which were originally developed by Alcoholics Anonymous, and based on the set of guiding principles for recovery from addictive, compulsive, or other behavioural problems. Quoting from the 12SFP he told us that “once a cucumber becomes a gherkin it never becomes a cucumber again". Once that invisible line has been crossed you are never quite able to get back, he said, so employees entering the workplace after recovering from substance and alcohol abuse continue to need support. He recalled just how fearful he was when he returned to work after becoming sober, and how terrified he felt simply opening a laptop.  

Although it is compulsory for businesses to nominate workplace first aiders, these don’t support those with mental health and substance abuse needs. Citrus, however, does employ people to provide such support, and while he does recognise that ultimately companies are commercial enterprises, his aim is that substance and alcohol abuse should be on every corporate agenda, and that companies should ultimately adopt and disclose policies on the issue.

Neil Carberry is CEO of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC), which represents a network of over 3300 recruitment businesses and 10500 individual recruiters.  He began his career in a small search firm specialising in financial services, ultimately obtaining a post-graduate degree in HR management at the LSE. He joined the CBI in 2004, and latterly became a managing director, leading its work on the labour market, skills, energy and infrastructure, before joining the REC in 2018.  He is a Member of the Council of the conciliation service ACAS and a Commissioner of the Low Pay Commission, which makes recommendations about the level of the National Minimum Wage.  He is also in the final stage of running 100 km, before Rugby Union’s Calcutta Cup for the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation charity to aid research into MND.

Neil focussed on humanity in the workplace, somewhere that people should be able to feel at home and be themselves. For some, such as victims of domestic abuse, he said, it may be their only safe place. 

He has found the recent months to have been a powerful experience. Continuously Zooming from his home “office”, has resulted in regularly inviting almost everyone into it, and this he says has brought a humanity to his leadership conversations and relationships with his staff. The daughter of a Zoom participant wandering in the background was a reminder to him of our humanity and a source of connection to grab hold of. Intimate knowledge has been shared in a way that it would not have been in an office based workplace. He now knows more about his staff and employees than he did a year ago.  

Employees who do the best work are those who are really engaged, and engagement comes with treating people with respect, understanding their motivations and their wider self. Businesses need to acknowledge that they are society, and society’s challenges are those of business. Whether tackling social inclusion, climate change or pandemic management, businesses need to show humanity. We've been sucked into a world of HR management, he said, remote sometimes from the underlying needs of employees, and we need to align that employee value proposition. Businesses, he said, are influential when then they can articulate what they do for people.

Neil reminded us that vulnerability in leadership - qualities such as openness and honesty - are also needed. Antonio Horta-Osorio, CEO of Lloyds Bank is a good example. In 2011, banks were still reeling from the financial crisis, and another was threatening in the Eurozone. Lloyds was in poor financial health, and stress began to affect the health of the CEO. He sought the consent and understanding of the board, which agreed to him taking eight weeks to recuperate. He ultimately returned himself, and the bank, to health but his personal experience led him to re-evaluate the importance of mental health for all of the bank's 65,000 employees.

Neil firmly believes the employers have a moral obligation to think about staff wellbeing in the broadest sense. Does he think that COVID is a catalyst for greater social equity? “Maybe” he answered.

Eric Collins is CEO, General Partner and Founder of  Impact X Capital Partners LLP (IXC) a venture capital firm established in 2018 which seeks to invest in underrepresented entrepreneurs from across Europe.  A serial entrepreneur himself he has served on boards and in the C-Suite of fast growth technology companies since 2001. His experience includes AI, SaaS based, mobile and health technology companies, and he has helped sell organisations to listed companies including Microsoft and Nuance. He has been named one of the most powerful black and BAME business people in the UK by the Power-list and the Financial Times

IXC was inspired by Eric’s recognition of the lack of investment in companies led by people from underrepresented communities, particularly people of colour and women. 

Searching for “unicorns” (VC speak for a tech start-up with a total market value of over $1 billion) it has raised a fund of over £100 million to invest in minority-led businesses. While Silicon Valley is no doubt the centre of the universe for unicorns, Eric has based himself here in the UK, where there are deep wells of venture capital supported by government initiatives such as the EIS and SEIS schemes.  

VC funds, he said, have typically been run by “monied” individuals with Ivy League backgrounds and this has contributed to a huge inefficiency between investment and entrepreneurs. When IXC was founded, less than 4% of VC funding went to teams led by women, and less than 1% to people of colour. Added to this there were, and are still no black CEO’s in the FTSE 100. He believes however, that despite his considerable achievements he is “pretty ordinary” and well placed to remedy this. 

IXC reviews dozens of investment opportunities in the digital technology, health, education, media and entertainment space, but is specifically interested in organisations that have been started by underrepresented groups and which deliver jobs to underrepresented people.   “If you can see people at work who look like you”, he said, “you are more likely to be motivated. It has a ‘positive flywheel’ effect on the business”.  

Asked whether any other UK VC shares his philosophy, Eric told us that there are several but it is IXC, which is particularly vocal about its strategy.