Compliance Services

Compliance is becoming central to the governance efforts of modern organisations, particularly those operating in highly-regulated environments. By understanding what compliance encompasses and how to meet their requirements, organisations can build systems that keep them in line with the law and reduce operational risk , as well as operating cost.

Compliance is rather straightforward to achieve, even though that does not always translate into easy. However, to be compliant with an increasingly burdensome regulatory regime, you have to be on top of compliance developments all the time. The key is to be as proactive as possible, rather than reactive. Nobody can wait to start the compliance journey until the auditors are knocking at the door. Being ahead of the curve is thus imperative.

Compliance management requires a compliance officer, and sometimes, depending on the nature and the size of the organisation, it might require several. It might also require external expert contributions, especially in the run-up to setting up the compliance infrastructure, but sometimes even to assist in the day-to-day running of compliance duties. Even in highly-automated environments, compliance can constitute a lot of manual work and is thus costly through and through.

Compliance is not something that can just be swept under the carpet as if though doing so will take it away. It might come back to bite you anytime. You need to have someone who is constantly monitoring risks, making sure your business is compliant, reviewing policies and procedures, doing research, keeping abreast of regulatory developments, and even liaising with supervisory authorities. This is typically either someone in-house or an external agency or company that can take care of compliance for you. You need people who are trained in legal issues, understand non-legal technicalities, can keep you out of trouble and know what they need to have in order if auditors come knocking on your door. If you don’t have those people in place, it will be your job to make sure all these things are taken care of. That takes time away from running your business productively and efficiently, which will result in lost revenue opportunities or other problems when deadlines aren’t met due to time spent dealing with regulatory matters rather than focusing on sales, marketing and productive activities.

The cost of getting compliant is hefty, especially for small businesses, and it is regrettably on the rise. However, the cost of non-compliance is in many cases even higher by multiple orders of magnitude.