Skillcast at 25: Looking Back at Events That Shaped Compliance

Over the past 25 years, UK financial services has transformed while compliance training has evolved from paper records to AI-enabled, mobile learning. As Skillcast marks its 25th anniversary, it’s clear just how much the industry has changed since 2001.

Key takeaways

• In the last 25 years, the UK financial services sector has transitioned from fragmented self-regulation in the early 2000s to the current "Twin Peaks" model, which was devised in response to the 2008 financial crisis.

• Digital compliance training evolved from physical media and paper record-keeping to learning management systems, microlearning, and courses delivered on smartphones.

• Looking ahead, the industry is shifting towards AI-automated risk monitoring, preparing for the Basel III capital requirements and the EU AI act, and adapting to the new Employment Rights Act.

Compliance through the years

Skillcast is 25 this year, and it’s fair to say a lot has changed since we launched in 2001.

In the UK, the charts were dominated by Westlife, S-Club 7 and Craig David, and the first series of Big Brother sparked water-cooler conversations across the country. An England team littered with stars (including David Beckham) crashed out of Euro 2000, and the Millennium Dome opened its doors to a mix of fanfare and bemusement.

The new millennium began with a sense of optimism in financial services. A booming global economy and rapid advances in digital technology promised to open up new ways for people to work, trade, and connect with each other. While the Y2K bug did not trigger the apocalypse many feared it would, the dot-com crash in March 2000 tempered early excitement with a harsh dose of reality.

Against this backdrop, Skillcast was founded (under the name Inmarkets) to help firms navigate their regulatory obligations. At that time, compliance training was largely a manual, paper-heavy process. E-learning was a relatively new concept, and the idea of digitising it was not yet the norm.

In this article, we’ll celebrate 25 years of Skillcast by looking back at how the financial services and compliance have evolved in the last quarter of a century. 

Centralisation and the birth of digital training

2000 – 2005

When Skillcast launched in 2001, the era of fragmented self-regulation in financial services had just ended. Where compliance had once been split across numerous bodies with overlapping jurisdictions, it was now overseen by a single sector-wide "super regulator" – the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Faced with fresh scrutiny, it meant financial services companies had to rethink their compliance strategies.

Training reflected the technology available at the time. Clunky CD-ROMs, PowerPoint presentations, and long in-person training courses were common. Firms had to gather whole teams together to train them, and reams of sign-in sheets were needed to prove that employees had attended their training. It’s no surprise that compliance often felt like a bureaucratic burden for many firms.

We recognised that by digitising compliance training – making it more streamlined and engaging – it would reduce this burden and make compliance easier . 

Crisis, collapse, and the rise of "RegTech"

2005 – 2010

The defining event in this period – and, from a financial services perspective, the 21st century so far – was the 2008 financial crisis, which toppled major banks and sent shockwaves through economies across the world.

While the United States housing bubble lit the touchpaper, the seeds were sown by regulatory failures. Too many financial firms were allowed to lend and speculate recklessly, building a volatile foundation of low-quality, high-risk investments – particularly subprime mortgages.

A global recession and massive government bailouts followed. In the UK, the collapse of Northern Rock marked the first run on a British bank in over 150 years, and the government took the unprecedented step of nationalising major institutions like RBS and Lloyds.

Regulators and the public completely lost trust in banks after the crisis, and a complete overhaul of the sector was inevitable. While the majority of new regulations came into force after 2010, the UK participated in immediate global efforts to reform banking standards (Basel II.5), while the Banking Act 2009 gave regulators new powers to manage failing banks.

Scott Morris, who has more than 40 years of banking and compliance leadership experience, notes how approaches to regulation and firms’ responses have evolved: 

“The shift from prescriptive rules to overarching principles led firms to think much more seriously about the quality of their systems and controls and the outcomes that they can achieve.

The financial crash in 2008 could have been a moment where the compliance function lost momentum, as many organisations struggled for survival. Instead, it drove a renewal and redoubling of efforts in the compliance, risk and anti-financial crime functions that has now resulted in more thoughtful regulation and increased regulatory resources across the whole regulatory environment.”

Luckily, training technology was improving around this time. The Learning Management System (LMS) emerged as the standard tool for large firms, moving record-keeping from paper to digital databases. Compliance courses became on-demand and were often delivered entirely online, enabling employees to complete modules whenever they had time. 

Software like Adobe Flash introduced interactive quizzes and clickable scenarios into training courses, and firms began to combine short online modules with in-person workshops. These advancements marked the early rise of regulatory technology, i.e. "RegTech."

"Twin peaks" and the post-crash clampdown

2010 – 2015

In the aftermath of the crisis, the UK government introduced sweeping changes to financial regulation – the most significant in more than 20 years. The FSA’s “light touch” approach was deemed inadequate for spotting systemic risks, and a single organisation clearly could not be trusted to keep giant banks afloat while protecting customers from unfair treatment.

The FSA was abolished in 2013 and replaced by a “twin peaks” model consisting of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which oversees consumer protection and market conduct, and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), which focuses on keeping larger institutions financially healthy. The Bank of England also formed the Financial Policy Committee (FPC) to identify and mitigate broader threats like household debt and excessive credit growth. 

Another uncomfortable truth was that supposedly "trained" financial teams had caused the crash. Despite ticking all the right boxes, some were still taking irresponsible and, at times, illegal risks. Those days were over. Now, firms and employees had to prove they actually understood their regulatory obligations and could be trusted to follow them. 

Compliance courses began to focus on coaching employees through different scenarios and teaching them to solve realistic problems. Assessments also became harder, with simple "true or false" tests replaced by complex questions without a perfect answer.
 
Regulators also started holding people personally liable for their actions rather than simply fining firms. By requiring employees to legally acknowledge their training and managers to attest to following the FCA’s rules, regulators hoped to curb the reckless behaviour that contributed to the crash.

Katharine Leaman, who served with the FCA for more than 11 years and oversaw compliance at two major banks, highlights the importance of culture: 

"Post-crash, the sheer volume of regulatory change that followed was staggering. The FX market issues in 2015 were another inflection point, driving home that conduct and culture couldn't just be slogans on posters.

 What strikes me most is how much firms have genuinely invested in getting this right. When we developed frameworks for implementing consequences for non-financial misconduct breaches in the banks, we had to take line managers through how their roles had changed, which wasn’t an easy task.

These weren't compliance people – they were business leaders who had to fundamentally rethink how they managed their teams and held people accountable.
 
Ironically, many investment firms and other non-banks are now facing exactly these same challenges as they prepare to implement SMCR requirements this September. The good news is that we've learned what works and what doesn't over the past decade. The firms that succeed are those that recognise this isn't about compliance theatre – it's about building businesses that can withstand regulatory scrutiny because they've embedded proper governance from the start."

Brexit, smartphones, and SM&CR

2015 – 2020

This was the era when Brexit loomed large. The referendum result in 2016 sent markets into turmoil – the pound experienced its sharpest single-day decline in 30 years, and banking stocks plummeted as firms grappled with a future outside the union. The prospect of defaulting to World Trade Organisation rules led many multinational firms to relocate to European hubs, and protracted negotiations with the EU over an exit deal left the country in limbo.

Two significant regulatory shifts also took place: the introduction of the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SM&CR) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). SM&CR, rolled out to all firms by 2019, made senior leaders personally liable for failings within their remit under a strict duty of responsibility. Simultaneously, GDPR forced a total overhaul of data handling in 2018. 

Financial firms also had to stay nimble as new challengers entered the market. Digital-only banks like Monzo were emerging as serious competitors to established firms, and regulators were scrutinising culture and behaviour like never before. New rules meant new (potentially massive) fines for non-compliance, so effective training became more important than ever.

Meanwhile, compliance and learning and development (L&D) teams had to evolve their training methods to suit the smartphone era. With buzzing and pinging personal computers in their pockets, workers became more connected but more distractible. Long, classroom-based training was officially out, and bite-sized lessons contained within mobile apps and browsers came into fashion. Gamification – digital badges, leaderboards, and interactive mini-games – helped to bring more tedious material to life.

COVID-19 and the AI frontier

2020 – 2025

To say the COVID-19 pandemic defined the past 5 years is something of an understatement. No event in the 21st century impacted people's daily lives more, whether that be through nationwide lockdowns, travel restrictions, illness and bereavement, or the more subtle behavioural changes that crept in after nearly two years in quarantine. 

The financial services sector was well-equipped to handle the transition to remote work. With roughly 78 per cent of workers able to do their job from home, most firms quickly moved office-based roles online, and once restrictions were lifted, hybrid working became standard practice. Compliance training had already gone digital, but the pandemic opened up new infrastructure for online learning courses and remote teaching.

Naturally, the pandemic presented new compliance challenges. As firms transitioned to permanent hybrid models, cybersecurity became a concern, with regulators scrutinising the risks of remote access, insecure home networks, and potential data breaches. Suddenly, anything seemed possible, and regulators began to scrutinise whether financial institutions could keep critical services running under extreme and unforeseen pressures.

Elsewhere, the Consumer Duty, introduced by the FCA in 2023, placed a legal requirement on firms to deliver good outcomes for customers. The sector is also adapting to the Employment Rights Act, introduced in 2025, which has strengthened protections around whistleblowing, unfair dismissal, and sexual harassment, and requires firms to update their conduct policies and reporting mechanisms. 

The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act also introduced a landmark "failure to prevent fraud" offence, making companies criminally liable for their employees’ actions.

As the pandemic subsided, we then found ourselves in the midst of another nascent technological revolution. Artificial intelligence (AI) began to make its mark in the early 2020s, allowing firms to automate routine tasks, comb large data sets, and construct hyper-personalised financial products.

A recent Bank of England study suggests that 75% of firms are already using AI, and regulators are focusing on ensuring firms adopt the technology securely without creating bias, leaking data, or trusting faulty information. AI itself is already playing a role in compliance training, with tools like Skillcast’s conversational Artificial Intelligence Digital Assistant, Aida, able to instantly respond to complex compliance questions.

Looking ahead: the future of compliance

With most firms planning to invest in AI, it's clear that the technology will shape the future of financial services for years to come. Throughout 2026, firms will navigate the phased implementation of the EU AI Act, which introduces new requirements for systems used within the financial sector. Simultaneously, the UK government continues to review the potential for a domestic AI regulatory framework to ensure standards remain robust while supporting innovation.

Following several high-profile hacks and data breaches, cybersecurity will also top the agenda in 2026. To see the full compliance roadmap for the year ahead, check out our list of the Top 10 Compliance Challenges in 2026, as well as Top FCA Priorities in 2026 for financial services.
 
After 25 years, Skillcast remains committed to providing innovative training tools and industry-leading compliance support. The year kicked off with our Future of Compliance summit in London, where industry leaders discussed how data-led strategies and AI can transform compliance into a measurable contributor to company success. 

Central to this vision is Aida, Skillcast's conversational AI assistant. Built specifically for compliance training, Aida provides users with reliable answers to questions about compliance, corporate policy and procedure. We have also updated our course libraries to reflect new regulations coming into force in 2026.

Our Compliance Portal features a range of tools to digitise and automate your compliance learning. These include our:

• Learning Management System (LMS)

• Policy Hub

• Compliance Register

• Compliance Surveys

• Compliance Declarations

• AI Digital Assistant (Aida)

If you would like to access leading insights and compliance tips, you can browse our free resources by topic to find guides, modules, compliance bites and more.

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