The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. Over four episodes each month on The Compliance Life, I visit with one current or former CCO to explore their journey to the CCO chair. This month, my guest is Asha Palmer, CECO at Convercent. Palmer moved to Abu Dhabi where she had a non-traditional, non-linear path. In this part of her journey, she discovered compliance, which became her professional passion when she was teaching Business Ethics. She worked in IP at Coca-Cola and eventually joined a Sovereign Wealth Fund with portfolio businesses across the world?
Resources
Asha Palmer LinkedIn Profile
Convercent by One Trust
Day: July 13, 2021
Categories
OSFI and Reasonableness
The Kitchen looks into the UK’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation recent guidance around licenses to access frozen funds to cover legal fees and maintenance expenses. OFSI looks at one ingredient in particular: that of “reasonableness” and the Kitchen is there to see what goes into the recipe for a successful license grant.
Welcome to Greetings and Felicitations. In this episode, I am joined by Astrophysicist and Healthcare Futurist Ben Locwin. In this podcast, we consider the TOS episode Where No Man Has Gone Before as a starting point for the consideration of the science around the phaser.
The Federation starship Enterprise is on an exploratory mission to leave the galaxy. At the edge of the galaxy, the ship it encounters a strange barrier which damages the ship’s systems and warp drive, forcing a retreat. At the same time, nine crew members are killed and both helmsman Gary Mitchell and ship’s psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Dehner are knocked unconscious by the barrier’s effect. When he awakens, Mitchell’s eyes glow silver, and he begins to display remarkable psychic powers. Alarmed that Mitchell may take over the Enterprise, Kirk decides to maroon him at an unmanned lithium-cracking facility on the remote planet of Delta Vega. Once there, the landing party tries to confine Mitchell, but his powers have become too great. Kirk follows with a phaser rifle, the only time in the Original Series it was seen. Kirk uses the phaser rifle to create a rockslide, killing Mitchell.
Highlights Include:
- Why aren’t phasers being used today?
- Why is air the biggest problem in creating a phaser?
- How can you aim and shoot at a target using a phaser?
- How do you deal with the energy loss?
How do you deal with having a leader who runs a public corporation?
Scenario: So you have a superstar CEO who is hyper-intelligent, dynamic, disruptive, and indeed uber-famous, and that person can bend the wind to his will, or so he thinks. Unfortunately, he also thinks rules and regulations like the SEC, disclosure, and financial statements are only for mere mortals, of which he is not one. He routinely makes questionable statements that drive his share price up and down. He also threatens employees with termination on the spot for those who don’t meet his rigorous work standards, even though the company has a written due process policy that H.R. has implemented.
As a compliance professional, how can you create a structure and work with a CEO who has an over-the-top personality and protect the company and work with that going forward? How do you utilize your Board of Directors? And other than perhaps giving your resignation or not taking the job to start with, — where might you start?
Key takeaways in the episode:
✔️ Why some great founders of disruptive companies struggle to transition into becoming mature corporate leaders. We run through several scenarios of a cult of personality with CEOs that started long before the technology boom and how leaders sometimes have destructive impulses that hurt their corporation?
✔️ Visionaries need practical people who know the rules, controls, and laws to run a company successfully. Kortney Nordrum, Regulatory Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer, states that a company will crumble without both. As compliance professionals, it is our job to rein it when all creative people don’t necessarily understand the rules they have to live by.
✔️ The Board of Directors’ job is to protect the company. If the CEO is a liability or presents insurmountable risks, that will ultimately fall on the board’s shoulders. Leverage your independent directors because, at the end of the day, the Board is the boss of the CEO.
✔️ Assess who is under the spell of the CEO? Is it internal, or is it external? If people are so bought into the person that they agree to whatever he says, it’s an internal culture issue. Ensure that some people are keeping perspective and monitoring controls are being enforced.
✔️ Why startups should institute internal controls early. As soon as you start employing people and go through hiring and payroll processes, that’s when you have to start caring about compliance and ensuring you have internal control structures to support what you’re building.
✔️ Culture trumps everything. Whether you’re working for a very charismatic disruptor CEO or a conservative CEO, the company’s culture should be one of compliance. If it’s not, then as a compliance professional, it’s your job to try to establish that.
✔️Even if you work for a disruptive leader, a high-flying, uber technologically savvy person, if they still respect you and your work, that’s key in leadership. In business, there are many negotiables, but it is imperative not to lose sight of being a decent human being and respecting others — that’s the one non-negotiable.
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Welcome to SURVIVE AND THRIVE, the newest addition to the Compliance Podcast Network. This is a podcast where we unpack compliance, crisis disasters and walk you through all the red flags which appear, and give you some lessons learned going forward. This show is hosted by Compliance Evangelist Thomas Fox and Kortney Nordrum, Regulatory Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer, Deluxe Corporation.
Do you have a podcast (or do you want to)? Join the only network dedicated to compliance, risk management, and business ethics, the Compliance Podcast Network. For more information, contact Tom Fox at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.
Tracy Manning is the Director of Financial Crime at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, and is Tom Fox’s guest this week on this episode of the Innovation In Compliance Podcast. She is a digital identity and financial crime expert, and currently leads the Commercial Strategy and Product Innovation for Financial Crime Market at LexisNexis. In this episode, Tracy and Tom are discussing the growth of digital transactions in the past year and what issues it may pose for compliance.
The Growth of Digital Transformation
Tracy remarks that the pandemic spurred digital growth, especially digital transactions. Digital commerce grew 44% last year, and its rate of acceleration is about five to seven years ahead. She adds that surveys show that these trends will not reverse, even as the world reverts to pre-pandemic environments.
Greater the Explosion, Greater the Risk
“With this explosion obviously we have greater opportunities, but I think perhaps greater risk,” Tracy says. While the vast growth of digital transformations is a plus and makes for greater opportunities for companies with respect to data, it also poses greater risks. Criminals have found new ways and schemes for evading financial crime control. Tracy explains key ways they leverage the anonymity of these faceless transactions. She adds that the onus is on companies to protect consumer data from these bad actors.
Key Questions & Guidance
Now that businesses are physically reopening, Tom asks Tracy to share some advice LexisNexis gives to companies. Tracy explains that companies are stumped on how they can transform their processes to better identify financial crime risk, create better customer experiences, and meet the emerging regulatory requirements. She adds that the most important challenge companies seek help with is achieving all these simultaneously. LexisNexis counsels these companies to keep their eyes on recent enforcement and newly published guidance due to the emergence of new threat schemes. It’s also important for companies to have a tool that can effectively meet regulatory demands, which can also create an improved customer experience. “Looking at digital identity is very, very critical…Digital evasion requires digital solutions,” she tells Tom.
What’s Next
As digital transactions evolve, Tracy stresses that companies need to evolve their compliance for this new digital normal by applying additional layers of digital identity intelligence within their organizations in a multi-layered approach. “An additional layer of digital identity intelligence is absolutely key to optimizing the customer experience…It can potentially allow you to identify good trusted customers and expedite their experience,” Tracy tells Tom. She adds that to fight financial crime, as well as having an additional layer of digital identity, companies need to have networks of their own.
Resources
Tracy Manning | LinkedIn | Twitter
