31 Days to a More Effective Compliance Program

Most CCOs and compliance practitioners understand the need for continuous monitoring. Whether it be as a part of your overall monitoring of third-parties, employees, or to test the overall effectiveness of internal controls and compliance, continuous monitoring is clearly a part of a best practices compliance program. Further, while most compliance practitioners are aware of the tools which can be...

Next, we consider how the internal audit (IA) function can be used to facilitate more effective continuous improvement. According to the Institute of Internal Auditors’ own definition, internal audit is “an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization’s operations. It helps an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systema...

One clear best practices to gauge the compliance culture and evaluate the strength of controls, is to conduct periodic audits to ensure that controls are functioning well. Interestingly, compliance in many ways follows some of the paths laid out by corporate safety departments some 20-30 years ago when safety became much more high profile in U.S. corporations. The safety committee and safety audit...

In this month's podcast series, I consider what techniques to use to create continuous improvement in your compliance program. As the DOJ stated in the 2019 Guidance “One hallmark of an effective compliance program is its capacity to improve and evolve.” Its implementation should help you to uncover and evaluate areas of risk and opportunities for improvement. Moreover as your business changes ove...

With the DOJ Evaluation’s emphasis on operationalizing your compliance regime, innovation is an important tool for you to use in this journey, yet one that is too often overlooked. We have considered a variety of innovations in compliance; from innovations in structure, use of social media tools and concepts, to new and different ways to consider your internal resources as ways to innovate in your...

Given the paucity of leadership coming out of Washington during this crisis, I thought it would be a ripe time to consider some innovations in compliance leadership. While many compliance departments may have begun more as a command and control function, set up by lawyers to comply with anti-bribery laws such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), this type of leadership model is now becomin...

Candice Tal is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Infortal Worldwide, and one of the top experts around on due diligence. In an interview, I asked Tal about the use of AI in investigative due diligence and specifically how AI has led innovation in investigative due diligence. Tal believes that AI will be a “game changer” in compliance. Massive data sets require some type of AI to sor...

Innovation can come in various forms for an organization. Innovation can appear in a structural form. You can move compliance more deeply into your organization with new or different structures. One I have seen have success is a Compliance Committee more closely tied to the geographic market in the field or the Regional Compliance Committee.  All of this works to adds a dimension not often seen or...

This is still a tricky area for most legally trained compliance professionals as law schools are far behind the business world in teaching these skills. Yet, not only data analysis but also the presentation of data in a visual format will be a key skill for every Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) and compliance practitioner going forward. However, if you do not possess those skills yourself, you can...

The compliance profession seems to be an inflection point, moving away from the lawyer-driven written policies and procedures to a more operationalized regime where compliance is a part of the overall ecosystem embedded directly in business process focused discipline. Seen in this manner, compliance will be seen not as a cost center but as a value creation center, helping the company to make busin...

Name any catastrophic corporate compliance failure and every root cause analysis will show there were silos which compliance could not break through. In the Boeing 737 Max design failure there was the siloed nature of the entire design, creation, training, regulatory and implementation team for the safety feature, the failed Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). At Wells Fargo, i...

One thing is certain going into 2020 and beyond is that technology that will improve the efficiency of compliance and will assist in the operationalization of compliance into fabric of every business which embraces it. I would posit that the compliance professional who incorporates the techniques they advocate into their organization’s compliance program will not only move their compliance program...

Design thinking is another innovation which can help the CCO move forward in a cutting-edge manner to make a compliance program not only more robust but also operationalize it into the fabric of the company. Such a mechanism would help to drive compliance into the operational nature of a company. This design thinking protocol can help to create a more effective ethics and compliance training model...

One of the most significant innovations in compliance will come through the incorporation of blockchain into compliance. I see great value propositions for the compliance function. There are two specific areas where I see blockchain directly impacting the compliance profession. The first is with third-parties. The second area where blockchain provides a potential game changer is contracts, specifi...

Imagine that as a CCO, you could create a team which might well dramatically improve your company’s compliance and risk forecasting ability, but to do so you would be required to expose just how unreliable the professional corporate forecasters have been. Could you do so and, more importantly, would you do so? Most generally this is the predictive capability that organizations have used. However,...

How can you use the tools of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data analytics in a best practices compliance program. Vincent M. Walden, a partner at Alvarez and Marsal (A&M), wrote an article entitled “Profit & Loss-of-One” (P&L-of-One) where he detailed how he and his then colleagues at Ernest & Young (EY) worked in conjunction with the General Electric (GE) compliance function to “improve compli...

One of the lessons we have learned from various Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement actions over the years is how complexity in business organizations can work to defeat compliance programs. Whether a corrupt employee is working to actively hide a pot of money, which can or will be used to pay a bribe, or an improper payment slips through the cracks; complexity can work to defeat a be...

In the compliance world, consistency is one of the keys to a successful compliance program. One of those areas where consistency is mandated is in contracting. Having consistency in the compliance terms and conditions of any contract is a critical aspect of the compliance professional. While there will certainly be negotiation over a wide variety of terms and conditions, from the financial and pay...

We previously considered how AI can be used as a business advantage for compliance. The power of AI can extend the more traditional functions of prevention, detection and remediation. The first way is in simply the mass amount of data which could inundate a compliance practitioner. Many compliance practitioners are overwhelmed about the amount of data available to them and do not know how or even...

Next, we consider the four practices that create the conditions for delivering an AI solution to compliance. Using these four practices can lead to enhanced operational excellence, more efficient business processes, and a more robust compliance experience. They are: (1) developing clear, realistic use cases, (2) managing AI learning, (3) continuous Improvement and (4) thinking cognitively. By appl...

Next we consider the crucial capabilities which a compliance function must have to implement an AI solution. Over the next several pieces, I will use the article Using AI to Enhance Business Operations by Monideepa Tarafdar, Cynthia M. Beath as an introduction into the how the corporate compliance function can use an Artificial Intelligence (AI) program to not only enhance the compliance function...

Today, I want to consider the article Strategy For and With AI by David Kiron and Michael Schrage. The authors premise is, “A company’s strategy is defined by its key performance indicators. Artificial intelligence can help determine which outcomes to measure, how to measure them, and how to prioritize them.”  Their article had several insights for the Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) or compliance...

The Department Of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission have both made it clear that they expect companies to be more robust in their use of data analytics in compliance programs. This means using data to not only detect and prevent illegal conduct but also in the remediation prong of any best practices compliance program as well through continuous improvement. Former Deputy Assistant Att...

Innovation in compliance is one of my passions for every Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) and compliance practitioner. So much so that I dedicate an entire podcast series to the topic, aptly named Innovation in Compliance. I was therefore intrigued with a recent Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, entitled What Kind of Chief Innovation Officer Does Your Company Need?, by Darko Lovric and Greig Sc...

What will be the role of AI in compliance going forward? LawTech disrupted the legal profession and reshaped many areas of private practice. I believe there will is a nascent ComTech industry lurking down the road with multiple implications for the compliance function. Obviously, document review is one area where ComTech would be most useful. There are many companies which provide key word searche...