DECEMBER 2021 NEWSLETTER
Compliance quote of the year
Tom Willoughby
15 December 2021
A lot is said about a lot in the world of regulation. We are regulatory futurists and keen to explore visions of the future of compliance in an increasingly regulated world.
As a highlight of 2021, we like this from Thomson Reuters “Cost of Compliance 2021: Shaping the Future” report:
“The ideal future compliance function would be adequately resourced with human and financial capital, with more automation of compliance activities. The compliance function would be seen as a strategic business partner which was integrated throughout the business, with culture and technology appropriately enabled.”
We couldn’t agree more! Our research shows that compliance officers spend up to 20% of their time managing unnecessary administration such as spreadsheets and e-mails. This makes them inefficient and non-“strategic”. Automation eliminates this and provides the potential to upgrade the role of the compliance function within a firm.
By way of example, in a recent survey we carried out across FCA regulated firms, just 17% of respondents currently employ workflow management and task automation tools for distributing and storing employee attestations. An almost identical percentage use de-centralised emails and spreadsheets for maintaining their firm’s Compliance Registers. The efficiency gains of automation in areas such as this are huge, for employees at large and compliance officers.
But automation also improves the quality of information produced and associated decision making. Our observation is that higher quality Management Information is a key driver for the compliance function in its quest to become a “strategic business partner” – to use Thompson Reuters’ phrase.
So, thank you Thomson Reuters – that is our compliance quote of the year!#