2021 CASS insight survey

The survey was launched in Q2 2021 with more than 50 firms, including investment banks, custodians, and asset and wealth managers. 

It contained more than 100 questions and recorded detailed information, for example on size of CASS teams, the roles of CASS oversight officers, type of approach used for client money calculation and more.

In this, our 5th year of running the survey, we have around 300 responses in total and now have trends over a 5 year period.

The year of the ‘Dear CEO’

Baringa Partners’ annual CASS Survey is the largest of its kind in the UK. Now in its fifth year, around 50 firms took part in 2021, sharing their views on CASS audit, the growing roles of technology in CASS management, and other key areas of concern.

It has continued to be an unusual time, so we are delighted that so many firms took the time to participate again this year. What the responses highlighted is how well firms have kept responding with developments to keep client assets safe and how auditors are improving the audit experience.

We now have 5 year’s survey of data to trend and our observations reflect changes from 2017 to 2021. Generally speaking, the increases in staff required and the number of breaches that came with the enhanced FRC standard have levelled off and firms are happier with their CASS audits. Audit costs do however continue to rise at a similar rate to 2020.

One characteristic of 2020/21 has been the volume of ‘Dear CEO’ letters relating to CASS written by the FCA. While targeted at specific sectors, such a Brokers for example, there is evidence of the highlighted themes being carried across sectors in the CASS audit which means all firms need to be aware of the content.

Benchmarking
The survey consisted of more than 100 questions and recorded detailed information on the size of CASS teams, the roles of CASS oversight officers, type of approach used for client money calculation, and more.
Results can be analysed by different attributes including sector, business activity, firm size, CASS footprint, etc., allowing firms to compare themselves to peer organisations even when they are not in the same industry group.

Baringa offers a benchmarking service against this data. For more information, please contact us via cass@baringa.com.