Securing Stakeholder Buy-In
A step-by-step guide to getting colleagues ‘on side’ when proposing or making a new regtech investment
While a firm’s compliance is handled by dedicated staff, the impacts and actions of complying with regulations reach across the whole organisation. Therefore, when making changes to your compliance processes – for example, investing in regtech – there are several stakeholders to consider, and securing their buy-in is important. If you are looking to modernise compliance processes and have colleagues yet to be convinced, this step-by-step-guide is for you.
- Communication is Key
A key element of securing stakeholder buy-in is the ability to demonstrate that the change you want to implement will help your organisation as a whole. Consider the approach taken by Steve Williams, Senior VP, Regulatory Compliance at Teleperformance BPO. In our webinar, Driving the Rise of Modern Compliance, he told us:
“We did a series of sessions with the people in operations who would be inputting to the system and providing us with info. The purpose of that was to persuade them and influence them that this is going to improve the efficiency of what we did and therefore make it less onerous for them.”
Reach out to colleagues outside of your compliance team who are impacted by your firm’s compliance activities and make sure that they understand how your chosen regtech investment can directly or indirectly help them, too.
- Demonstrate Practical Value
While communication is important, it should be paired with action. This dual approach is an even more effective way to demonstrate the benefits of any investment in new software or change in operations.
On this topic, Steve observed:
“If you can get their buy in in terms of making sure that they understand that this [software investment] is going to help them, then they’re going to use the system.”
This matters because if the regtech you want to implement is useful to multiple areas of your business, it becomes a more interesting and valuable investment. Just remember to reassure your colleagues that your proposed software is not intended to replace necessary human activities and expertise, but rather to enhance operations and client experiences.
- Convince Senior Staff
Once you have the support of your colleagues, it is time to ‘seal the deal’ with more senior stakeholders – think Board-level or C-suite. If you do not possess the power to sign off on new investments, it is important to secure the approval of those that do, and transparency and accountability with your Board are important practices.
Evidence the value of your proposed regtech investment by sharing your communications and practical engagement with both the compliance team and other areas of the organisation. Don’t forget external stakeholders, too – your chosen regtech should be able to bring benefits to your clients as well as to your staff – for example, through digitalising time-consuming processes to give staff more free time for more hands-on and client-facing compliance tasks. The more benefits you can demonstrate, the more appealing and useful your proposed regtech will seem.
- How ComplyPortal Can Help
Visit https://complyportal.uk/modules/ to find out how our straightforward, comprehensive compliance technology solution can help you and your organisation. You can also book a software demo or talk to one of our expert advisors to discuss how our compliance technology can meet your and your organisation’s needs.
About ComplyPortal – Compliance software since 2011:
First developed in 2011 by compliance professionals for compliance officers, ComplyPortal offers workflow, automation, and several modules to help firms with control and regulatory compliance monitoring.
ComplyPortal simplifies financial services regulatory compliance management on an easy-to-use cloud-based comprehensive compliance platform. It enables compliance officers, risk officers and senior management to keep track of their firm’s regulatory responsibilities and workflows. Our platform includes the following modules, among others:
- Monitoring: a year-round schedule pre-populated with monitoring questionnaires to ease compliance processes.
- Registers: lists controlled by the Compliance officer, but easy for staff to view.
- Risk: map and control risk areas to effectively identify and manage risk for your firm.
- eKYC system: perform comprehensive searches, including client identity verification, document authenticity, and more for a comprehensive KYC and AML approach
