Top 5 Compliance Priorities for CCOs in 2023

3. Build a Positive Compliance Culture

With compliance risks increasing, it can be hard for compliance officers to monitor every single risk and control. And they shouldn’t have to. The success of a compliance program doesn’t rest with one team. Only when everyone in the organization acts as a watchdog for compliance, can the business successfully navigate uncertain times with trust and confidence.

Empowering the frontline to own compliance risks is beneficial for two reasons. One, they’re the eyes and ears of the company, and are more likely to spot compliance violations first. We’ve seen it happen with multiple whistle-blowers – from Enron to Theranos.

Sharing compliance responsibilities also frees up compliance officers to focus on more high-value activities that can support business growth.

But empowering the frontline isn’t about micro-managing how they assess, manage, and monitor compliance. This will only undermine their capabilities and make them less likely to act on risk.

A better approach would be to give the front line a sense of agency and autonomy.

• Let them prioritize the compliance risks that they consider important and come up with action plans on their own 
• Train them to use their judgment well when making decisions about risks or compliance violations 
• Equip them with skills, guidance, and resources to confidently manage compliance risks 
• Encourage them to identify red flags and feel protected when doing so 
• Provide intuitive, user-friendly tools where employees can report anomalies easily and discreetly 
• Act fast on these observations to show employees that you care about their inputs

95% of compliance leaders have built or are building a culture of compliance to share the responsibility across the enterprise Accenture Compliance Risk Study - 2022

Strengthening compliance ownership in the first line bolsters the compliance monitoring capabilities and oversight of the second line. Collaborative and synchronized efforts between both lines can improve risk visibility and forecasting, making the organization nimbler in the face of change.       
 

4. Take Equal Ownership for Operational Resilience

In today’s volatile world, organizations face all sorts of crises. A pandemic triggers a lockdown and a complete shift in working models. An extreme weather event damages business equipment and disrupts supply chains. A cyberattack shuts down critical infrastructure and exposes sensitive information.

We can’t always prevent these situations, but we can adapt, recover, and bounce back quickly. Compliance officers play a key role in building this kind of operational resilience and agility.

One way they can help is by working with the business to size up a crisis, and then implement robust defenses, controls, and policies to respond quickly. Another way is by pre-determining processes, systems, and measures that can be implemented to speed up recovery in the event of a compliance failure or business disruption. Together, these approaches can help organizations minimize compliance damage, protect stakeholders, and get back to business-as-usual swiftly.

Compliance’s role in resilience becomes even more important in the light of the UK’s Operational Resilience Regime and the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), as well as the US’s Sound Practices to Strengthen Operational Resilience. Companies rely on their compliance officers to better understand and navigate these challenging regulatory landscapes.

Ultimately, resilience building is an enterprise-wide effort that calls for collaboration and information-sharing among various teams – compliance, internal audit, enterprise risk management, and third-party governance. When everyone can work together in a unified manner, coordinating resilience and recovery strategies seamlessly, the organization is more likely to ride out a crisis successfully.       
 

5. Leverage Technology to Strengthen Compliance

Compliance management is essentially a juggling act. Whether you’re tracking regulatory updates, overhauling policies, monitoring risks, or assessing controls – there’s a lot to do. And it can’t be done manually – not with regulations, risks, and business needs constantly changing. 

Cost pressures are also increasing. Compliance officers are expected to manage an ever-widening range of responsibilities with fewer resources. 

Technology can offer a way past these hurdles. For example, AI/ ML can automate and streamline risk assessments, regulatory tracking, and compliance testing to help reduce compliance costs. Meanwhile, a shared compliance platform can unite all teams in one place to seamlessly collaborate and share information. 

Organizations with a robust compliance management solution can also expand the scope of compliance monitoring and auditing, significantly. Instead of testing just a sample of data to determine compliance levels, compliance officers can monitor the full range of documentation and activities to get a complete, real-time view of compliance. 

Powerful analytics, dashboards, and reporting tools can provide valuable insights on compliance trends, enabling users to slice and dice the data in different ways. 

Together, these cognitive tools and solutions are becoming strong enablers of compliance programs, opening the door to greater efficiency, effectiveness, and agility.