One of the most slippery tasks for any compliance officer is measuring the effectiveness of your program. And we all know one of the go-to metrics that compliance officers use, even if many secretly wonder how informative that metric really is. We speak, of course, about “hotline statistics.” Just last month, Convercent and Ethisphere published…
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We haven’t had a book review here yet, so let’s turn to one book fresh off the presses and written by one of the compliance community’s own: How to Be a Wildly Effective Compliance Officer, written by Kristy Grant-Hart. Kristy (I have known her for years and refuse to call her “Grant-Hart”) has spent 10…
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Anyone looking for the latest about Hui Chen, hired by the Justice Department last fall to be its first-ever compliance counsel, look no further—she appears in a lengthy interview published by Ethics & Compliance Initiative this week, talking about what she wants to see from effective compliance programs. The Justice Department’s Fraud Section hired Chen…
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Compliance officers in the financial world, take note: financial crime regulators may be edging a bit forward on their approaches to fighting terrorism funding. At least, that’s one way to read this week’s statement from the Egmont Group, an affiliation of financial crime regulators trying to develop coordinated approaches to fighting money laundering and terrorism…
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Few compliance and audit executives believe that integrating those two functions is a wise idea, but good news for those of you forced by your CEO to march down that dubious path—you have some fresh guidance on how to make the trip with minimal missteps. Last week the Institute of Internal Auditors published a slim…
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Well, apparently now it’s the nominating and governance committee’s turn to be hammered on the anvil of corporate governance reform. We see the evidence everywhere: a report from the Government Accountability Office noting that at current pace, women will represent half of all seats on corporate boards sometime around 2055. Calls for more women, minorities,…
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Yesterday I had the privilege to participate in a corporate governance forum in New York, talking about the board of directors’ role in building corporate resilience. Resiliency is a popular buzzword in governance circles these days, so I want to recap some of the main points here—because while I agree that the modern company absolutely…
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Anyone looking for jobs in the compliance field these days is bound to encounter the hot buzzword in the profession, “Compliance 2.0.” Mostly this phrase is marketing spin—but it’s worth dissecting in a bit more detail, because there is some substance behind the idea, and that can have some importance as compliance professionals look for…
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I try not to wax too philosophical in my columns, nor take such a macro-economic view of events that I lose sight of the relevance to compliance officers. Sometimes, however, as we all struggle to answer that eternal question, “Does fighting for ethical business standards really matter?” a perspective comes along that answers the question…
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As Wall Street crashes around our ears this week—down 1.5 percent just today, and off to its worst yearly start ever—audit committees at financial firms should strap yourselves in. This year’s audit could be the most tumultuous you’ve overseen in a long while. At least, that’s the conclusion I reach as I re-read the guidance…
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