Does Compliance Pay its Dividends?

When has addressing the burdens of compliance not been on your agenda?

It seems like there is a never-ending list of regulatory expectations to follow that are meant to protect governments, institutions, organizations and consumers. Moreover, the topics under the compliance umbrella have grown as well, whether it’s cybersecurity, individual information and employment data, or environmental impact, food and drug regulations, consumer product protection — and the list goes on. 

Overall, the global trend towards a more stringent regulatory environment is not expected to slow down — and that also suggests that it will require organizations to invest more in resources to manage compliance responsibilities. So how can organizations keep the cost of compliance under control? 

There are a few examples where the compliance function can take advantage of efficiencies. Some of these include: 

• Make use of structured regulatory compliance data 
  Leveraging regulatory content providers can go a long way in reducing the legwork organizations need to do to navigate the maze of regulatory changes. It is essential to find a partner that will add value on top of the content delivered by structuring, analyzing and enriching regulatory data. 
• Leverage technology to make the data actionable 
  For example, to manage notifications, perform an impact assessment and remedy deficiencies. 
• Efficient execution of a compliance assessment 
  Talking to and gaining consensus from the array of individuals who have knowledge of applicable laws and regulations can be daunting. Codifying and testing the efficacy of the control environment requires the capture of automatic (vis-à-vis systems and technology) and manual activities. 
• Reporting 
  Consistent documentation of management activities and controls allows for better decision making and the potential for optimizing how you allocate resources. Investments in technology, controls and resources can be evaluated whether the reduction in exposure is greater than the total amount of the expenditures. 

Finally, using risk management software to manage compliance is having a rich compliance data set. This allows for the aggregation and, arguably more important, the disaggregation of compliance data. This provides evidence that the compliance program is being embedded and sustained through well-defined and recurring business processes. This has merit for the regulators. 

Facing the uncertainty of how the regulatory environment may change, financial services organizations have to find a way to stay in control of their regulatory change management, as well as their costs.  

Related reading: Regulatory Change Made Simple Through GRC Software white paper

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