Over the past few weeks, we’ve heard from our Client Project Manager and Principal Engineer. Now, it’s Anna’s turn! Anna is our Senior Compliance and QA Officer, and she’s here to make sure we do things right.
Anna’s role is all about keeping our business practices ethical, making sure we are all following the rules, and that we deliver accurate, high-quality work for our clients.
Tax work covers a broad range of activities from preparing, processing or submitting tax returns, to complex tax planning and advice. All of these revolve around money, specifically how much our clients can expect to save or recover from HMRC. In any business which deals with money, there are risks of potential money laundering, whether directly, indirectly or through facilitation. Anna’s role is to ensure that we have practices and procedures in place to reduce our exposure to those risks, and to ensure all the rules are followed, i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed.
So what does the compliance aspect of your role entail?
Well, it’s a mix of things. First, I make sure the team knows what they need to do and why it’s important. As well as keeping up to date with any legislative changes, preparing training materials and user guides for the team is always high on my list. I’m also always ready to jump on a call, whether it’s with the team or a client, to explain why we need certain information, what we’ll do with it, and how we’ll keep it safe.
I also regularly check that we’re keeping detailed and accurate records of the client due diligence the team does. This way, if there’s ever an inquiry or audit, we can show why we decided to work with specific clients.
That sounds awfully time consuming – your team mates and client contacts must hate having to go through this process?
Actually, no. Our clients are used to this kind of onboarding process with other service providers, like their banks or accountants. At Catalyst, we mix legal requirements with our curiosity and eagerness to understand our clients and their businesses. We want to be their business partners, part of their wider team, not just external consultants. Like many of them, we’re a new business too, and we hope to grow alongside our clients, by helping them with smaller claims today that will enable them to grow and carry out more R&D in the future. We can’t do that without really getting to know them well.
What about the quality assurance aspect of your role?
As a lawyer, I’ve always been detail-oriented. Early in my training, I learned that even a simple misplaced comma can wholly change the meaning of a sentence and affect the final outcome.
Tax, whether calculating benefits, preparing tax returns, or drafting supporting R&D case studies, is governed by laws, rules, and regulations that must be precisely followed for our clients’ claims to be successful. Our clients rely on our expertise to prepare and present those claims, so it is essential that we get it right and we get it right first time. The team at Catalyst that prepares the clients’ claim documents are qualified professionals. My role is not to question their knowledge or abilities, but to act as a second pair of eyes to ensure that none of those pesky commas (metaphorically speaking) is out of place.
It also means that whilst my direct exposure to our clients may, of necessity, be limited, I do get the benefit of getting to know about all of our clients and, better still, learning about some pretty amazing R&D!