Regulators expect procedures that are specific to the firm's actual business, assign named responsibility, and describe the evidence a reviewer leaves behind. Generic manuals bought off the shelf are a recurring finding in examinations, because they describe activities the firm does not do and omit the ones it does.
Typical contents include account opening and customer-identification-program steps, suitability reviews, advertising approval, personal trading, error handling, complaint logging, business continuity, and escalation to the chief-compliance-officer.
Failure to supervise is a standalone charge. A firm can be sanctioned because its procedures were inadequate even where no customer lost money, which is why the manual is treated as an operational document rather than a formality.
Related: chief-compliance-officer, customer-identification-program, broker-dealer, finra