Profession Support and Assurance guide

Regulatory Support and Assurance through Regulatory Schemes

The RICS Charter and Bye-Laws authorise the Standards and Regulation Board to make regulatory schemes to ensure the maintenance of standards of the membership. In addition to the Rules of Conduct requirements for all Members and firms, compliance and best practice is regulated through registration on following Schemes: Client Money Scheme, Designated Professional Body Scheme for General Insurance Distribution (UK) and Valuer Registration.

All members of the profession and registered firms are bound by our rules which means they must comply with reasonable requests to review their systems, processes, files, and related documentation.

Profession Support and Assurance programme for Members and Firms

We support the profession and underpin client and wider public confidence through our Profession Support and Assurance programme. This programme comprises a range of quality monitoring activities, to assess the performance of RICS professionals and firms against RICS mandatory standards and, where necessary to support them back into compliance. While this is almost always a cooperative and constructive process, in serious cases of non-compliance we use our disciplinary powers to enforce compliance.

In line with international best practice in regulation, our programme is risk-based – which means using data and market insight to target our resources where we see the greatest likelihood of public or client detriment occurring.

Compliance monitoring and reviews

In order to monitor compliance with the standards and rules, our specialist, qualified reviewers engage with registered professionals and firms, to review their compliance materials including mandatory returns of information, undertake interviews and file/document reviews.  This can be completed in a variety of ways either by remote off-site means using digital technology such as Teams, or via face-to-face on-site at the Member or firms’ premises (subject to COVID-19 restrictions). The RICS powers are contained in the Monitoring and Investigation Rules (latest version with effect from 2 February 2022).  The different methods are outlined below:

An MSV is a Member Support Visit where a firm’s practices and documents are reviewed, and any non-compliance with the RICS requirements is noted. This is followed by a detailed feedback session where we attempt to coach and lead the firm/member into compliance, providing documents/templates and advice as appropriate. In addition, a memo of findings will be provided to the firm/member as a record of the non-compliances found. A Regulatory Review Visit (RRV) is a more in-depth review resulting in a graded report and where potentially, further follow up work to ensure compliance may take place alongside a detailed feedback session on findings. In some circumstances, we may convert a MSV to a RRV, should we deem necessary or we may elect to carry out an RRV in the first instance.

Workshops are where presenters will talk about RICS schemes, the rules and requirements and what needs to be done to comply with them. These are interactive sessions where RICS members can book on a day and a scheme that suits them. Here, members will get real time advice and help on compliance with the scheme being presented on. Members can book into these sessions via the RICS website.