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The Challenge of the Compliance Profession

Financial losses, penalties and legal fines, injured reputation. These are the short backs that will somehow be associated with the poor performance of Compliance Management and consequently to the poor work carried out by Compliance Professionals.

The truth of the matter is that, any other everyday business activity can equally create these negative outcomes but when it comes to pinpointing obvious and measurable wrongdoings the Compliance Department can easily take the blame. This adds to the challenge encountered by any compliance officer, but it also raises questions in identifying the traits needed for Compliance Talents.

Do compliance officers have to be understanding of legal and other regulatory frameworks? The answer to this question is definitely affirmative but what is additionally requested for any professional is to add value to this understanding by having a global outlook of various rules and being able to advice and provide consultation on these to various departments.  That in turn maximizes the level of responsibility and accountability for the profession.

To a further extend, this increased level of accountability creates the necessity for all those accountable to have integrity and act upon moral standards. The magnitude of information that a Compliance Officer handles in an every business setting also makes this a challenging task to fill and that is why time management is of true essence. He or she must produce compliance processes that meet the needs of the organization’s internal environment but also of its most precious asset, its client’s needs and requirements.

That leads us to another equally important question. Would a software system in place make the challenging role of Compliance Officers more manageable? It is often stated that a compliance officers “wear a lot of hats” and has to fill in various jobs when assessing the numerous roles and duties undertaken by them.

Software solutions (such as  the ones provided by iSPIRAL), that deliver results within budget and time constraints as well as within regulation frameworks can only do good to business operations. They are useful tools that help compliance departments gain that holistic view on correlated mechanisms and procedures and equally make this whole “various hat filling business” controllable. Anti-Money Laundering / KYC Solutions can be considered the manual for alerting, reporting, calculating, reminding, managing, and all that with an going pace and continuity. More importantly they make a compliance officer’s tasks manageable.

For that reason alone, only moving to a software-based environment should be a top priority for the majority of companies.

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