Layla Shakkour

Layla is a director in Protiviti’s risk and compliance solution with over 10 years of experience advising clients across financial services, gaming, and other highly regulated industries in both Australia and the UK. She has a commercially minded and pragmatic approach to risk management, consistently balancing regulatory expectations with operational efficiency to support strategic and sustainable business outcomes.

Layla leads Protiviti Australia’s conduct risk sub-solution, partnering with clients to strengthen their compliance culture, uplift governance frameworks, and embed compliance into decision-making.

Major projects and accomplishments

• Regulatory implementation: Layla has led the end-to-end delivery of several complex regulatory change programs for major Australian and global banks, encompassing initial gap assessments, design and implementation of controls and processes, and post-implementation effectiveness reviews.
• Compliance program reviews: Layla has delivered multiple compliance program reviews against the ISO 37301:2021 Compliance Management Systems standard, identifying gaps and providing tailored recommendations to uplift frameworks to align with global best practices.
• Gaming compliance reviews: Layla has led several compliance reviews across the gaming sector in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia, assessing adherence to regulatory requirements and providing recommendations to strengthen risk controls in a highly complex industry.
• Governance effectiveness reviews: Layla has led governance reviews focused on evaluating the performance of Compliance Committees, including assessments of charter quality and the level of compliance with governance mandates.
• Obligations management: Layla led the delivery of a large-scale obligation assessment program (400+ obligations) of an Australian digital bank, inclusive of process mapping, control identification, control documentation, and control testing.  
• Brexit regulatory response: Layla was the lead business analyst at a global wealth and asset management firm, responsible for coordinating the firm’s strategic and operational response to Brexit. Layla partnered with Trading Management to assess post-Brexit trade flow implications and implement tactical and long-term risk mitigation strategies amid a rapidly evolving geopolitical environment.
• Product governance review: Conducted a comprehensive review of a global fund manager’s product governance arrangements for the manufacture and distribution of funds, which included the identification and rectification of regulatory gaps and provision of recommendations for areas of improvement to meet industry best practice standards.

Areas of expertise

• Regulatory change
• Regulatory compliance  
• Risk management
• Compliance assurance

Industry experience

• Financial services
• Gaming

Education

• Bachelor of Arts (Honours), Ancient History, King’s College London
• Graduate Diploma in Law, Kaplan Law School, London
• Legal Practice Course, The University of Law, London
• Certificate of Qualification in Law, The Law Society of Upper Canada