The Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI) has entered into a partnership with the City of London Police so that members can support the force in fighting economic and financial crimes.
London-based members, and those in the surrounding regions, who are newly retired or about to retire can volunteer with the police force to support them in the fight against cybercrime and fraud, which are estimated to cost the UK nearly £7bn ($8.8bn, €7.8bn) a year.
After the initial pilot, the programme will be extended across the whole country.
Ian Dyson, City of London Police commissioner, said: “The challenge in the modern world is the volume of data we are dealing with.
“We have limited capacity in policing at the moment to manage this. People who are operating in a profession can bring to me those specialist skills that help me, and my officers, understand how the criminal is committing their fraud.
“CISI members all have skills that we need. You may think that you have nothing to give the police but the structures that you manage on a day–to–day basis are exactly the structures the fraudsters use and that we need to understand.”
Valuable volunteer work
The partnership will be spearheaded by special commander James Phipson, who is also a volunteer police officer himself and manages his own professional services firm in the City.
“CISI members encompass exactly the professional pool that we want to reach out to,” Phipson said. “Every one of its members has skills that we are desperate to use.
“If CISI members want to get involved, we would be delighted to consider them. There is no minimum hours requirement at all. Some of our volunteers are retired and work for us full time. Others help us on specific investigations or in specific functions.”
Simon Culhane, chief executive at the CISI, said: “As a professional body, we work with over 1,000 volunteers, without which we couldn’t function.
“It occurred to us that here was another opportunity for our senior members, all of whom have long backgrounds and expertise in the financial sector.
“Some of these senior members might be thinking of moving away from full–time paid work to use their minds and time to help the public, by volunteering with the police to combat the fraudsters.”
