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Bespoke Trainings
COLP and COFA Masterclass
Course overview
This focused, practical session gives new COLPs and COFAs a clear understanding of their statutory roles, day-to-day responsibilities and how to evidence “reasonable steps”. Over the course of the session we blend short briefings with scenarios, model documents and peer discussion. You’ll leave with a simple governance map, a quarterly monitoring plan, and the templates you need to run effective compliance meetings, record and triage breaches, and report confidently to the partners and the SRA.
Course objectives
By the end of the course, delegates will be able to:
- Explain the purpose and legal basis of the COLP and COFA roles, and how they interact with the Codes of Conduct and Authorisation Rules.
- Define the boundaries of responsibility: oversight vs doing, delegation, and maintaining independence and authority.
- Build a proportionate compliance framework: policies, procedures, training, supervision and monitoring that actually work in practice.
- Design and run an effective quarterly compliance cycle (MI pack, dashboards, risk register and actions).
- Operate a meaningful breach management process: spotting, grading, remediating, recording, trend-tracking and root cause analysis.
- Decide when to notify the SRA: materiality tests, timing, content of reports and avoiding over/under-reporting.
- Align AML, sanctions, complaints, data protection and PII with the compliance officer remit without duplicating effort.
- Prepare for SRA inspections and insurer queries with concise evidence packs.
- Use management information smartly: leading and lagging indicators, exception reporting and heat-maps for partners.
- Handle incidents confidently (e.g. accounting errors, file integrity concerns, confidentiality slips, client care failures).
- Embed a speak-up culture and staff accountability through training, induction and simple controls.
- Evidence “reasonable steps” through minutes, action logs, audit trails and proportionate file reviews.
- Produce a clear compliance officer report to the board/owners and set a forward plan for the next 90 days.
- New COFAs are also directed to our SRA Accounts Rules course.
Next dates
COFA Masterclass: Now open for bookings
The full-day course will be delivered by Sean Hankin and Liz Bond, two former SRA specialists with extensive experience of the Accounts Rules and the way firms’ financial controls are examined in practice.
The course is aimed at COFAs, finance directors, legal cashiers, managing partners and anyone with responsibility for client account governance. It will cover the role of the COFA, reconciliations, breaches, residual balances, banking facilities, accountants’ reports, supervision of the finance function and how to deal with problems before they become regulatory events.
- Wednesday, 7th October 2026
- 10:00 – 16:00
- Castle Bromwich Hall Hotel, Birmingham
- ÂŁ495 + VAT
- Contact sam@jblcompliance.com to reserve your space
Places strictly limited.
