What happened in that room stays in that room

France's former Prime Minister and the Vice-President of the ACPR walked into a breakfast meeting. Ninety minutes later, every compliance and operations leader in the room left with a clearer picture of what France's banking regulator actually expects, what it penalises, and where the gap between written rules and enforced standards really lies. No recording. No press. No summary deck.

That was the point.

On June 30th, Ondorse and August Debouzy hosted an off-the-record morning session at 7 rue de Téhéran, Paris, bringing together a small group of Chief Compliance Officers, COOs, and financial crime leads from regulated institutions. The panel included Bernard Cazeneuve, former Prime Minister of France and now compliance partner at August Debouzy, Jean-Paul Faugère, Vice-President of the ACPR, Louis Degeorges, counsel in banking and financial regulation at August Debouzy, and Aymeric Boëlle, co-founder of Ondorse.

The conversation covered the ACPR sanctions commission's recent decisions, the governance and internal control failures most frequently cited by the supervisor, and the practical standards now expected of regulated entities on Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing (AML/CTF). It was, in short, the kind of briefing that doesn't exist in any published decision or regulatory circular.

We can't tell you what was said. That condition was non-negotiable, and it was precisely what made the room worth being in.

What we can tell you is that this format is not a one-off. Ondorse is building a practitioner community for compliance and operations leaders in financial services. These sessions are organised for that community first.

If you want to be in the room next time, join the Ondorse community.