Demand for compliance experts at all-time high: Former Serious Fraud Office principal prepares to tackle financial crime as director of Exiger

Exiger, a company which provides risk and compliance management solutions and automated due diligence systems has appointed Robert Wilson to the board as Director.

From the company’s London office, Mr. Wilson will focus on forensic accounting, a skill that is in continually increasing demand.

Forensic accounting involves the use of accounting skills to investigate fraud or embezzlement and to analyze financial information for use in legal proceedings.

Last week, FinanceFeeds reported that compliance officers are experiencing vast increases in remuneration, because there is a shortage of skilled personnel in that particular field, and that the increases in salaries and day rates for compliance experts has begun go rise exponentially.

Indeeed, recruitment specialist Barclay Simpson stated last week that 75% of managers in the Square Mile and Canary admitted that they have difficulties in locating and recruiting employees that are skilled in compliance, and among those managers, 62% stated that the difficulty in recruiting compliance professionals with the required level of technical acumen was high.

At the beginning of this year, FinanceFeeds reported that day rates certain senior compliance roles will rise by 20% to £1,200 per day, and middle-management or internal compliance roles will rise by 7.7% to £700 per day.

Specialist company Exiger, which concentrates purely on providing compliance, risk and due diligence solutions to the financial services industry worldwide, is a case in point as the appointment of Mr. Wilson demonstrates that the highest caliber is required in these times of regulatory and compliance being paramount.

Mr. Wilson’s senior level career expands over a 23 year period, as he joins Exiger from the Financial Reporting Council this week, after two years working with the Professional Discipline Team which investigated allegations of misconduct by accountants, including the audit of financial statements for major listed companies involving the big 4 audit firms and smaller practices.

Before a brief stint at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline in London, Mr. Wilson spent a year at IBM where he was responsible for fraud investigation and data analytics, developing innovative ways to exploit and interrogate “Big Data”, as well as identifying other sources, such as social media, which can be used to enhance decision making and investigative processes.

During his time at IBM, Mr. Wilson published a research piece titled “Tackling Fraud and Error in Government” in 2013, citing that fraud and error costs the UK government an estimated £30bn every year. Fraud alone amounts to more than £20bn and nearly £10bn goes missing as a result of administrative errors. This adds up to more than £1,000 for every British taxpayer, and taking a look at what can be done.

This is the latest publiction from Mr. Wilson, following three previous works, including International Corruption, and two former works on regulatory whistleblowing programs, one for Strategic Risk Magazine, and later for PwC Fraud Academy.

In May 2009, Mr. Wilson joined PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as a Forensic Accountant, which led to a three and a half year tenure at the firm.

Mr. Wilson began his career as a Chartered Accountant at Deloitte in London in 1993, before becoming Finance Manager at British Telecom before embarking on his first role at PwC, which led to 5 years at the Serious Fraud Office as a Principal Investigator.

Educated at The University of Manchester, Mr. Wilson gained his alma mater in 1993 as a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Mathematics.