PwC released the results of its latest State of Compliance survey. In this seventh iteration, PwC polled 825 risk and compliance executives worldwide about their organizations’ compliance polices and procedures, training, monitoring and technology.
Only 17% said they are very satisfied with the effectiveness of their compliance programs. Another 45% said they were somewhat satisfied.
Personally, I don’t find that result interesting. The survey covers a large swath of organizations across different industries, different sizes, different geographies and different risks. Only a few firms, if any, are like mine and only a few, if any, are like yours.
What I found most interesting is what PwC gathered about the compliance programs at the 17% of the firms that were satisfied with the effectiveness of their compliance programs. PwC identified four ways those 17% do things differently:
- Invest in tech-enabled infrastructure to support a modern, data-driven compliance function
- Increase compliance-monitoring effectiveness through analytics and the use of technology
- Streamline policy management to increase responsiveness and boost policy and procedure effectiveness
- Take advantage of information and technology to provide targeted, engaging and up-to-date compliance training
Given that three of these four factors are technology driven, I would guess that these are focused on larger organizations that need technology to deal with larger flows of information and data than a small or mid-sized firm.
I would also guess that dashboard and data to show compliance functions helps assure that the organization is being effective.
I’ve argued in the past that determining effectiveness is hard because you are try to prove that the absence proves the point. If compliance program is 100% effective, there will be no reporting events. Of course the problem is that the lack of reportable events is either because there were none, or you were just unable to discover them.
My nay-saying aside, it’s clear that having data leads to better compliance. Good technology tools to help extract and interpret that data are incredibly helpful to compliance programs. This survey proves the point.
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