When it comes to compliance matters, there are organizations who struggle with them while others successfully adapt without missing a beat. With the push we’re seeing in many quarters around the world for greater transparency and accountability lately, we’ve decided to deviate from our usual Viewpoint format for the next few weeks in favor of a closer examination of the qualities demonstrated by organizations that have mastered compliance.

We believe the compliance and payment professionals we speak to in this space will gain meaningful insights from concepts shared here. As always, please feel free to give us your opinion on what you’ve read.

The first quality a best-in-class compliance operation demonstrates is a close relationship between its regulatory subject matter experts (SME) and its information technology (IT) process modeling.

With such a cross-departmental relationship, someone involved with managing compliance for the organization is also able to interpret the data its IT department receives. For example, under this concept, a financial institution’s compliance officer would understand the AML compliance data it collects and be able to make decisions based on that information.

Compliance is a multidisciplinary responsibility for the best-in-class operations which links many fields including those involving business, legal, technical, procedural, political and organizational functions. This shared understanding enables an organization to meet its regulatory expectations as well as monitor its compliance progress.

Being able to gain a clear picture of what’s happening with an organization’s compliance enables management to be proactive about meeting regulatory standards.

Next Week: The importance of clearly defining compliance responsibilities