How Boards Should Oversee Compliance

board

Compliance officers wonder constantly about how they should talk to the board of directors, and what issues they should bring to the board’s attention. Today let’s flip the script and ask — what should board directors be asking compliance officers? Which compliance issues should keep them awake at night?  This is on my mind thanks…

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Tips on Reporting to the Board

board

The other week I had the good fortune to moderate a webinar on how compliance officers can have a better relationship with the board of directors, which is a top priority for pretty much all of you. The conversation was great and the advice excellent, so I took plenty of notes and now pass them…

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What Boards Are Saying About AI

model risk

Today I want to start an occasional series about artificial intelligence, and how businesses can take a more risk- and compliance-aware approach to integrating AI into their operations. We might as well start that exploration at the top: What are boards saying about how they oversee the adoption of artificial intelligence? Not much, apparently. At…

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Is Cyber Driving the CCO-Board Relationship?

cybersecurity

We begin this week with yet another compliance benchmarking report, this time from Navex: a deep look at how compliance officers engage with senior management, and whether cybersecurity concerns, rather than anti-corruption, might be driving the board’s attention to compliance these days.  Navex published the report late last week. It polled more than 1,300 compliance…

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USAA Settlement: Board-Level Reforms

USAA

Before we forget, compliance professionals should take a look at the enforcement action banking regulators imposed on USAA last week. It’s a fascinating look at how regulators are trying to pressure corporate boards and senior executives to take compliance risks more seriously. What happened? The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and FinCEN hit…

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SEC Commish Talks ESG, Board Governance

ESG

SEC commissioner Allison Herren Lee delivered a speech Monday forcefully laying out the need for corporate boards to take ESG risks and disclosures seriously, presumably as a prelude to whatever enhanced ESG disclosure rules the Securities and Exchange Commission will adopt sometime later this year.  Lee, who has spoken about ESG issues numerous times and…

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Citigroup, Part III: Better Board Oversight

citigroup

Today we return to Citigroup and its $400 million regulatory settlement from earlier this month, a case that offers a cornucopia of lessons for risk and compliance professionals. This time around, we consider what Citi’s board will need to do to rectify the bank’s poor internal governance.  First, let’s recap the case so far. The…

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Podcast: The Board-CCO Relationship

board

Chief compliance officers are always looking for ways to maintain a productive relationship with the board, which isn’t easy considering all the issues both sides are trying to manage in a compressed amount of time. So today we have a podcast and column devoted to the subject. The podcast is a conversation I had with…

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CCOs Serving on Corporate Boards

board

This week I had the privilege of moderating a forum in New York for ethics and compliance officers who wanted to talk about an idea that makes tremendous sense: CCOs serving on corporate boards.  After all, regulators increasingly want companies to embrace a culture of compliance that avoids corporate misconduct in the first place, or…

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Guest Post: Boards & Compliance Committees

board

I recently spoke about the board-compliance officer relationship to a group of sitting audit committee chairs at major, publicly traded corporations. During the presentation the discussion turned to board structures and whether companies need a separate committee to oversee compliance (as opposed to the compliance function reporting directly to the audit committee). I think it’s…

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