Our Board

Iain Stephen - Major Accounts Partner

Iain is a veteran of the finance services industry with over 25 years in banking, investments and insurance with Barclays, Citibank and NatWest banks and is formally qualified in both Banking and Accountancy. Iain is also a Chartered Management Consultant.

Iain is the founding Director of Compliancy Services, setting up the company in 2003. As Managing Partner Iain’s main focus is on large clients, which include a number of Plcs, household names and other large firms, providing board level support and guidance to clients’ compliance functions. Iain also has been responsible for ensuring many regulated firms gain their FSA license and has acted as a skilled person under section 166. Iain’s clients also benefit from his wide-ranging business and consulting experience.

Iain is a senior member of several industry organisations, providing input into the formation of policy and advising on lobbying. He is also a regular speaker on business and compliance matters.

Jayson Upton - Partner (City Markets)

Jayson qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales in 1995 prior to entering the Compliance sector. Jayson has 14 years Compliance and Regulatory experience spanning the securities, futures and commodities markets as well as the wholesale and retail investments, equities, mortgage and insurance sectors. Amongst other roles, Jayson's experience includes the performance of market supervision of the London International Futures and Options Exchange (LiFFE), and the commodity exchanges for wheat and coffee derivatives. Jayson has previously spent over five years working for the regulatory authorities, including the Securities and Futures Authority (SFA), and the FSA as a Senior Associate in the Supervisory Division. During his time at the FSA, Jayson relationship-managed a number of investment firms working on Conduct of Business reviews, focused supervisory visits, enforcement actions and Thematic reviews. Additionally Jayson was a member of the FSA’s Corporate Authorisations Committee providing supervisory input into the authorisations and cancellations processes.

Jayson’s professional experience also includes several years as a Manager at Deloitte where he managed numerous projects for a range of clients including retail banks, major investment firms and networks. Whilst at Deloitte Jayson carried out many MiFID engagements and was seconded to the FSA to analyse the prudential requirements for Non-MiFID scope entities, resulting in Discussion Paper 07/04.

Claire Wilkinson - Partner (Retail)

Claire has over 20 years Financial Services experience across retail banks, mortgages, insurance, and investments. Claire's qualifications include Full FPC, CeRGI and Advanced CeMAP. Claire is also a committee member of the Association of Bridging Professionals.

Claire’s previous compliance supervision roles include working for the Mortgage Code Compliance Board as a regional Compliance Inspector. In this role, Claire assisted a number of firms, including large networks and other firms make the change from the MCCB regime to FSA regulation. She has also worked as Head of Compliance for one of the UK’s largest insurance and mortgage networks.

As Associate Compliance Director of RAMP, Claire provided FSA regulated compliance services to both small and medium sized intermediary firms. Claire has extensive knowledge and experience of the mortgage, insurance and investment markets.

Claire became involved in the regulation of sale and rent back at the start of its period of regulation and is probably the country’s leading SARB Compliance Consultant.

Ben Mason - Managing Partner

Ben is joint Managing Partner of Compliancy Services and an experienced financial services professional. Prior to entering consultancy, Ben worked within the Full Service Leasing sector Managing European M&A as Business Development Director for Masterlease Europe, a subsidiary of GMAC. Within this M&A role Ben was responsible for managing a number of transactions that doubled the group's asset base to $1bn AUM. Prior to that, Ben held several industry operational roles, working as Operations Director for a specialist UK provider, responsible for a number of asset management activities such as asset pricing, valuation and funding.

Ben is also an experienced Commercial Project Manager having worked on a range of projects including business integrations, acquisitions, restructures, business start-ups and IT project delivery.

Ben’s wide-ranging role at CSL encompasses responsibility for sales and marketing, operations and systems development. Ben is a member of the Securities Institute (MSI) and his MBA is accredited by the Association of MBAs.

Colin Iles - Training Director

Colin joined Compliancy Services after spending over 30 years working in Retail Banking, Mortgage and Insurance with the Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS). During his time with HBOS Colin undertook a variety of management roles. This included managing the largest Halifax branch, managing the implementation of Halifax Life, and as a Regional Training Manager responsible for designing and delivering training programmes in all disciplines for HBOS’s staff.  Additionally Colin spent over 10 years in a number of senior risk and compliance roles, including Regional Risk and Compliance Manager and Head of Risk and Compliance for Retail Telephony Sales. Both these roles gave Colin a detailed insight into the FSA’s ARROW process, FSA regulations and best practice FSA Compliance.

As a Compliance Consultant and Trainer Colin has a broad experience of working with a range Insurance, Mortgage and Sales and Rent Back intermediaries of all sizes.  Allied to his long experience in Retail Banking and Compliance Training this has provided Colin with a wealth of experience to call on as Compliancy Services’ Head of Training.

Colin’s qualifications include Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, the Diploma in Management Studies and the Certificate in Mortgage Advice and Practice.