New Zealand Tops TRACE Anti-Bribery List

rankings

TRACE International has posted its latest annual ranking of bribery risk in countries around the world, and good news if you’re working in New Zealand — Kiwi Country poses the lowest risk that government officials there will hit your company with a shakedown. Every year TRACE publishes the TRACE Bribery Matrix, a ranking of 200…

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Update on Third-Party Risk Programs

third-party risk

Navex Global gave a sneak peek this week of its latest report on third-party risk. The headline: too many compliance departments still rely on paper-based systems to track third parties, and therefore too many probably underestimate the risks their third parties truly pose. The 2018 Navex Global Third-Party Risk Management Benchmark Report, which surveyed 1,200…

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Congress Talks Fintech Law

GRC frameworks

The Senate Banking Committee dipped its toes this week into the future of fintech regulation, debating whether that future should mean implementing new rules to cover the emerging sector or shedding existing financial regulations that might hamper innovation. The hearing included testimony from representatives of fintech and financial services companies as well as academia. Committee…

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Update on SEC Whistleblower Reforms

whistleblower

The compliance community has less than two weeks left to submit comments on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed revamp of its whistleblower awards program. So far, most of the comments received are not flattering. The SEC voted 3-2 along party lines in June to issue the proposed tweaks to the whistleblower program, which has…

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Calculating the Pay Ratio Rule

compensation

A new study shows that CEOs still make gobs more money than the rest of us mere mortals, although Corporate America uses a variety of approaches to demonstrate that point. ClearBridge Compensation Group analyzed 100 companies in the S&P 500 to see how they complied with the CEO Pay Ratio Disclosure Rule. That’s the requirement…

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Trump Admin Speaks on Data Breaches, Fintech

risk

The Treasury Department came out swinging Tuesday in favor of a national data breach law and a light regulatory touch for “fintech firms” swarming into the banking and compliance worlds. Those were two among more than 80 recommendations contained in a 200-page report from the Treasury Department looking at fintech and nonbank financial firms. The…

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FCPA Enforcement & Inherited Liability

fcpa

The Justice Department made another plug for voluntary disclosure of FCPA trouble on Wednesday, this time stressing that prosecutors will apply the department’s new FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy even to misconduct companies inherit through mergers and acquisitions. Matthew Miner, deputy assistant attorney general, delivered that message while giving a speech to compliance professionals in Washington.…

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SEC Nominee Gets Hearing

Roisman

The Trump Administration’s nominee for an open seat on the Securities and Exchange Commission appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, and while his nomination is probably in good shape, he endured sharp questions from Democratic committee members on SEC enforcement and conflict-of-interest rules. The nominee, Elad Roisman, is currently chief counsel for the…

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PwC 2018 State of Compliance Report

PwC released its annual State of Compliance survey on Tuesday, and let’s start with the angst: most compliance officers aren’t confident that their companies’ compliance programs are effective. Of the 825 professionals surveyed, only 17 percent said they are “very satisfied” with the effectiveness of their compliance programs. About 45 percent say they are somewhat…

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Podcast: Materials Declarations and IPC-1754

IPC-1754

Our latest Radical Compliance podcast is for heavy industry, aerospace, and defense contractors  grappling with hazardous materials in the supply chain, and the new IPC-1754 standard to simplify the declaration of those materials as you send components along to other parties. The standard is the latest in a family of materials compliance regulations that have…

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