Distinguish insider dealing, unlawful disclosure and market manipulation under UK and EU market abuse definitions.
Finance & Banking
Market Abuse Surveillance and Insider Dealing Controls in Capital Markets
Trains compliance, surveillance and legal teams to detect insider dealing and manipulative trading, calibrate alerts, run STOR assessments and defend investigation files under UK and EU market abuse rules.
🗓️Duration5 training days
📚Content4 modules · 8 sessions
🎓On completionAccredited attendance certificate
About the programme
Course Overview
Trading venues and investment firms generate enormous volumes of orders, executions and communications every day, and buried within that noise are the rare patterns that constitute insider dealing, unlawful disclosure or market manipulation. Surveillance teams are expected to find those patterns quickly, document a defensible rationale for closing or escalating each alert, and file a Suspicious Transaction and Order Report before the regulator asks why they did not. This course works through the legal boundaries of market abuse under UK and EU regimes, the mechanics of insider lists and wall-crossing, and the trading behaviours behind spoofing, layering, wash trades and front-running. Participants build alert scenarios, tune thresholds against historical order book data, and practise writing investigation narratives that hold up under regulatory challenge. The course closes with control room governance, covering how compliance, trading desks and legal coordinate on restricted lists, market soundings and close periods so that detection is matched by prevention.
Expected Learning Outcomes
Design trade surveillance scenarios that flag spoofing, layering, wash trading and front-running patterns.
Calibrate alert thresholds against historical order flow to reduce false positives without missing genuine misconduct.
Assess wall-crossing requests and maintain insider lists that satisfy regulatory record-keeping duties.
Draft investigation case files and Suspicious Transaction and Order Reports that withstand regulatory scrutiny.
Coordinate restricted and watch list controls with personal account dealing and close period policies.
Evaluate communications surveillance lexicons and cross-market alerts for coverage gaps.
Who Should Attend
Compliance officers responsible for trade and communications surveillance.
Market abuse and financial crime investigators in banks and brokers.
Control room staff managing insider lists and information barriers.
Legal counsel advising trading desks on market conduct risk.
Surveillance analysts tuning alert models for equities, fixed income or derivatives desks.
Front office supervisors accountable for conduct risk on trading floors.
Course Modules
Select any module to see its sessions and points.
01Defining Market Abuse Across Insider Dealing and Manipulation
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Legal Boundaries of Insider Dealing and Unlawful Disclosure
- Analyse the definitions of inside information, precision and price sensitivity under UK and EU market abuse regimes.
- Map the offences of insider dealing, unlawful disclosure and market manipulation to specific trading and communication scenarios.
- Distinguish legitimate research and pre-hedging from unlawful use of material non-public information.
- Review enforcement decisions to identify recurring fact patterns behind insider dealing findings.
Session 2Manipulative Trading Patterns and Order Book Behaviour
- Identify spoofing, layering and wash trade patterns from order book sequences and cancellation ratios.
- Examine front-running and marking-the-close behaviours across equities, futures and fixed income venues.
- Assess benchmark and reference price manipulation risks in thinly traded instruments.
- Evaluate cross-product and cross-venue manipulation schemes that exploit correlated instruments.
02Building and Calibrating Trade Surveillance Systems
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Alert Scenario Design and Threshold Calibration
- Design surveillance scenarios and parameters aligned to each identified market abuse typology.
- Calibrate alert thresholds using historical order and trade data to balance sensitivity against alert volume.
- Apply statistical outlier and peer group comparison techniques to flag anomalous trading behaviour.
- Document scenario tuning decisions and validation testing for internal model governance review.
Session 2Communications and Cross-Market Surveillance
- Configure lexicon-based and natural language communications surveillance across email, chat and voice.
- Integrate trade and communications alerts to build a single view of suspicious activity around an event.
- Extend surveillance coverage across correlated products and trading venues to close arbitrage blind spots.
- Review surveillance system coverage against new products, venues and trading strategies each quarter.
03Investigating Alerts and Managing the Case File
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Triage, Escalation and Investigation Technique
- Triage alerts using a documented rationale that separates genuine misconduct from explainable trading activity.
- Interview traders and reconstruct trading rationale using order, communication and market data timelines.
- Escalate credible concerns through the control room to compliance, legal and senior management promptly.
- Preserve evidence and maintain chain of custody for records that may support a regulatory referral.
Session 2Suspicious Transaction and Order Reporting
- Draft a Suspicious Transaction and Order Report with a clear narrative of the suspicious behaviour observed.
- Apply the reasonable grounds for suspicion standard when deciding whether to file a report.
- Coordinate STOR submissions and follow-up regulator queries without alerting the individuals under review.
- Close investigation files with defensible documentation that supports future audit or enforcement requests.
04Prevention, Governance and Control Room Coordination
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Insider Lists, Wall-Crossing and Information Barriers
- Maintain insider lists and wall-crossing logs that satisfy record-keeping and access control requirements.
- Design information barrier controls between deal teams, trading desks and research functions.
- Manage market soundings so that the disclosure of inside information is properly recorded and consented.
- Administer restricted and watch lists that reflect current deal activity and personal account dealing risk.
Session 2Control Room Governance and Continuous Improvement
- Define control room roles and escalation protocols linking trading desks, compliance and legal teams.
- Report surveillance effectiveness metrics and alert outcomes to senior management and relevant committees.
- Benchmark surveillance coverage against evolving trading strategies, asset classes and regulatory expectations.
- Embed lessons from closed investigations into scenario design and staff training programmes.
What the participant receives
4 course modules
A structured syllabus
8 training sessions
across 5 days
32 detailed points
Applied, detailed content
Accredited attendance certificate
On completing the programme
Complete your registration
We will contact you within one business day to confirm.
Ready to start?
Reserve your seat and start building the skill.