Dervilla Kenny, Compliance Manager with PTSB, recently won the Compliance Champion Award at the IOB Future of Finance Awards 2025 in recognition of her leadership of a new regulatory change lifecycle model for the organisation.
Dervilla’s nomination for the Awards highlighted her commitment to stakeholder engagement and outcomes. Following a review of compliance processes in her organisation, Dervilla’s work to introduce an enhanced regulatory change model has resulted in greater clarity for stakeholders and more efficient reporting and tracking of regulatory change.
We speak with Dervilla about the importance of regulation for the industry, her drive to innovate and improve compliance and the importance of ensuring the right outcomes for customers.
I have spent most of my career working in frontline Treasury Sales teams, but since the financial crash, regulation has become so important in ensuring that we have a stable and secure banking system, and one that also delivers the right customer outcomes. Seeing the impact that regulation was having in financial services motivated me to pursue a career in compliance.
My role brings a lot of variety to each and every day. I engage with stakeholders across the bank and externally on upcoming regulatory change to ensure that we have a thorough understanding of what the change means for us, and put in place clear and efficient plans for implementing the change in a timely manner. I also spend quite a significant amount of time on horizon scanning to understand if a proposed regulatory change will have an impact on our customers, and on the organisation itself.
When I joined the upstream compliance team, I set about reviewing the existing approach and challenging the ‘way we do things’ in PTSB, while thinking of outcomes for all stakeholders. To bring about this change, I used a regulatory change lifecycle model, which documents each stage of the regulatory change lifecycle from identification and communication through to implementation and BAU management, to workshop with key stakeholders across the bank. The enhanced and innovative regulatory change lifecycle model, along with the associated regulatory change guidelines that I developed to support the new model, brings clarity to all stakeholders across the regulatory change lifecycle and facilitates more efficient reporting and tracking of regulatory change in the bank.
I love the variety that the role brings, the opportunity to engage with different stakeholders, and the span of different types of regulation which impact different areas of the bank.
Challenge your teams to ensure that the bar that they set for compliance is high enough that it meets the spirit and not the letter of the law, and that compliance is factored into everything that the teams do. Also, challenge teams to put themselves in their customers shoes, be that internal or external customers, so they can consider things from their perspective and get a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities that present themselves.
One common misconception that I’ve come across in the past is that compliance teams are there to stop the frontline teams from doing business, and I believe that couldn’t be further from the truth. In my experience, compliance teams work closely alongside frontline teams to collectively, and collaboratively, ensure the right outcomes are achieved for all customers. And the value that this collaboration brings is that it makes sure that it is done in a safe and compliant way.
I was delighted to be recognised for my work and making a difference in PTSB – I hadn’t worked in the organisation for a full 12 months when I was nominated so even the nomination alone made me feel proud of what I had achieved in that short time. I really respect the other person shortlisted in my category - they are an outstanding compliance professional and to even be shortlisted with them was an achievement, so I was blown away when my name was called out on the night.
As technology continues to evolve into the future, my hope is that innovative capabilities, such as AI, enhance the products and services offered by financial services providers to meet customer needs, and work in complement to the valuable human support I see demonstrated by my colleagues each and every day, whether they are in the frontline or back-office teams such as compliance.
Dervilla Kenny won the Compliance Champion Award at the IOB Future of Finance Awards. Learn more about the IOB Future of Finance Awards 2025 winners here.