By Luis Parra:

“Technology has earned a place in both our personal lives and at work. For Compliance Officers, the right tool can dramatically elevate your team’s work with minimal disruption. ComplyPortal Director Luis Parra shares a few tips that can help Compliance Officers practically and successfully implement a compliance management software solution.”

The Lighthouse Approach

Technology is transforming businesses across the globe at an unprecedented pace. Regulation and compliance demands are also increasing in frequency and complexity and technology is needed to keep up with these obligations. But what exactly is a ‘lighthouse approach’ and how can it help you implement a new compliance solution?

Put simply, a lighthouse approach is a targeted kick-off of new technology in your company: a short-term, measurable project that can serve as a model — or “lighthouse” — to illustrate what a bigger and more successful rollout of technology in your firm would look like. Orchestrated well, a lighthouse project can show others in your organisation how effective they can be with use of technology.

This approach lets you start with one person or just a small team to start with, which also makes it easier to train and implement. Seeing success in one aspect of your organisation can then serve as an inspiration for the rest of your organisation to follow. Using this approach enables short-term wins and long-term cultural changes that can accelerate adoption of technology by employees in your organisation; a ‘lighthouse’ makes it much easier for your colleagues to see what is possible rather than simply telling them.

Planning Your Project

Start with a small project that will put innovative technology on display and show off efficiencies gained. Technology that is demonstrably easy to use and user-friendly will go over well with colleagues. Once your project is executed, celebrate the win, and showcase positive results quickly – people do not like to wait.

Remember to showcase the value of your chosen software in a way everyone can understand. This should take a form that everyone can appreciate even if it does not directly benefit them. For example, statistics: phrasing your wins like “we have reduced the time it takes to monitor our compliance processes by 80 percent” or “compliance processes we have onboarded to this new technology are now 100 percent auditable” conveys the benefits your organisation will gain regardless of how familiar your audience is with compliance.

This approach is flexible and allows for adjustments early on before rolling it out to everyone in the firm. Having measurable success and value everyone can understand will improve your ability to scale.

Securing Support

We know that it is it critical to have top-down support for your compliance processes and technology implementation. Having a high rate of compliance software adoption is crucial because compliance is crucial to a firm’s success. Therefore, having management behind the rollout will add an additional incentive to help employees understand the importance of their participation in the program.

Here are some steps you can take to keep management engaged and foster their support:

• Set clear objectives for the project from the outset
• Launch a lighthouse project to evidence the benefits of compliance software
• Celebrate wins: these will serve as a beacon for the next project, or wider roll-out of software use
• Include the importance of compliance processes in Management’s communications with all employees

Remember: the more benefits you can demonstrate to management as well as employees, the more appealing and useful your proposed compliance management software solution will seem.

Ultimately, adopting and implementing compliance technology is about more than the software itself. Since compliance is such an essential process in [financial services] organisations, it is important to be thorough not only in your selection process, but also in how you evidence the benefits of your chosen software solution. If you can find compliance software backed up by a team to help you with implementing and adapting your digital compliance processes, so much the better.

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

2020 was an unprecedented year. It catapulted the use of technology and required individuals to adapt to a very different way of working. Of course this was true for all, but especially true for Compliance Officers who needed to adapt ways of working against an unprecedented level of new rules and regulations.

For that reason, automated approaches to risk and compliance saw a rise this year. Automation is the key here, and incorporating advanced rules enhanced by machine learning is becoming a must.

Automation can help firms with resource-intensive tasks such as risk management, identity management, compliance checks, transaction monitoring and regulatory reporting.

We talk to companies all day, everyday about how software can streamline business processes, automate routine tasks, generate arduous reports in seconds and most importantly… improve overall organizational efficiency.

As we navigate the aftermath of a bumper year of expected and unexpected challenges, compliance officers continue to play a crucial role in maintaining organisational stability. With a few months of 2021 under our belts – covering everything from early post-Brexit life to a new US administration and Covid vaccination roll-outs – firms are looking to both learn from the past year and prepare for any future changes.

The following are core issues compliance officers will have to address – some in new and unprecedented ways – in 2021.

Business Continuity

The Covid-19 crisis has demonstrated that, if required, firms can adapt at pace to unprecedented crises and demands. Firms have also been tested by down-to-the-wire Brexit talks which generated much uncertainty about potential future outcomes for business and trade. All of this has reinforced how crucial business continuity plans are. While compliance officers cannot predict the future, they must work with their organisations and with financial regulators, stress testing and scenario planning to prepare for multiple eventualities.

Regulatory Change

Regulatory change is commonplace in financial services and – despite the upheavals of the past year – this is unlikely to slow down any time soon. With national and international policy changes, a continually evolving global pandemic, and ongoing industry developments like the rise of amateur and meme investors, there is much for regulators to respond to. As such, compliance and risk officers have multiple avenues to keep an eye on.

Compliance Optimisation

Considering the myriad challenges facing compliance officers, investing appropriately into skills development and digital resources is more important than ever. Reuters’s 2020 Cost of Compliance report identified the following as the top three skills needed by an ideal compliance officer:

1. 1. Subject matter expertise
   2. Communication skills
   3. Integrity

Staying ahead of the curve is a business necessity. Investment in continuous professional development (CPD) for compliance officers and their teams is also crucial so they have the right skills to meet new and existing challenges.

Digital investment is an additional means to help compliance teams juggle the multiple demands placed upon them. Regulatory technology (RegTech) is being increasingly relied upon by compliance professionals to efficiently address their roles and responsibilities, be it managing workflows for remote or hybrid teams to demonstrating compliance to regulators. Solutions such as ComplyPortal, which was developed by compliance officers with compliance officers in mind, give teams the freedom to work anywhere with agility, efficiency, accuracy, and access to comprehensive support in order to juggle the competing demands that modern compliance brings.

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

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