Expanding the Role of Regulatory Compliance Managers

The world of compliance management is changing rapidly. We saw the first major change with the influx of computers, then another one with the mainstream adoption of information technology. Compliance management solutions are ushering in another change and these changes are changing the job role and responsibilities of regulatory compliance managers.

The Fintech industry itself is nascent but the rapidly growing demand of better regulatory compliance technology has quickly resulted in another industry forming within Fintech. This industry is called Regtech (regulatory technology) and its ascent is astonishing. In just a matter of years it has gone from an idea to a billion dollar industry
, and this is just the beginning. As we mentioned in our recent blog, the GRC market may expand to be worth more than $67 billions within the next decade.

Going from conception to $67 billion shows the high demand for compliance and regulatory technology. Compliance management solutions are now a common sight in businesses all over the world and they will soon be a necessity. The implantation of these solutions doesn’t just represent a change in the way the business will work, but also a change in the way compliance officers and managers will work.

How Compliance Technology Changes the Job

The important thing to understand about compliance solutions is that they do not seek to replace compliance personnel – they instead empower them by allowing to do more work in a smaller amount of time. Regulatory Compliance technology automates almost all the administrative and menial tasks associated with compliance. It also automates monitoring of the compliance framework and can automatically notify assigned users whenever it detects a compliance problem.

Monitoring the compliance status of the organization, managing the compliance processes and framework, and ensuring that all documents are properly managed are time-intensive activities, but they are also all related to management of the existing regulatory compliance infrastructure. That is where compliance managers and officers will now be able to make a difference – when they don’t spend half their day simply managing documents, following up on compliance tasks, and tracking compliance, they have the time for bigger projects than ever before.

Starting Compliance Improvement Programs

Many businesses want to start a program to evaluate and improve their current compliance management approach, but many are unable to dedicate resources for it. Compliance personnel have a crucial job and their input is vital to any compliance improvement program. Removing a compliance professional from their compliance monitoring or infrastructure management work meant reducing the efficiency of compliance, which no management wanted. The compliance personnel were so busy ensuring that the current compliance management approach worked that they didn’t have the time to work on improvement.

Things work differently once compliance tasks are automated. The compliance personnel will now have free time because the most time-intensive parts of their job are now automated. The important thing to consider here is that only the menial parts of their work are automated. The tasks which did not really use their regulatory compliance experience or training. Now they can focus on compliance improvement. They can be asked to assess the existing work processes and recommend improvements wherever they can. They can focus on the big picture and do better investigations. They will be able to do better audits since compliance solutions create audit trails and will be able to determine the most common failures in compliance. These failures can then be remedied. The industry’s latest best practices can be determined and implemented within the organization as well.

Getting ready for the future

If businesses want to be able to reap the full benefits of the new compliance management technology, they need to ensure that their compliance personnel are ready for the future. Instead of waiting until it is absolutely necessary, the smart move is to start training compliance professionals for the future of compliance. There need to be more trainings about the technologies on the horizon. Organizations should also start involving regulatory compliance managers in more discussions and plans. They will now have the time to not just catch and report compliance violations, but to contribute to the business process design to ensure the chosen processes encourage compliance.

For a more detailed look at how banks are getting ready for the future of compliance read our white paper Top 10 Compliance Initiatives for 2018 in small to mid-sized banks and financial institutions.

If you want to see what regulatory compliance will look like in the near future our team will be happy to show you. The 360factors team will demo the American Bankers Association endorsed Predict360 Compliance Management Software module. The team will also be able to provide you a free month-long trial of the solution so you can truly see the benefits it can bring to your organization.

About the company

360factors, Inc. (Austin, TX) helps companies improve business performance by reducing risk and ensuring compliance. Predict360, its flagship software product, vertically integrates regulations and requirements, policies and procedures management, risks and controls, audit management and inspections, and on-line training and qualifications, in a single cloud-based platform based on artificial intelligence.

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