Welcome to Season 2 of Sports and Compliance. For the longest time, Tom Fox has wanted to have a podcast on the intersection of Sports and the World of Compliance and Ethics, both for those stories as they play out on the Sports Page and for the lessons they provide to business executives and compliance professionals. In this podcast series, Tom Fox is joined by one of the top compliance commentators, Stephen Martin, CCO at Skillsoft. Together, we will use our love of sports and competition to discuss current ethical issues in sports, look at compliance through a sports lens, and determine how the world of sports and its stories can be a guide for the compliance professional.
However, in this inaugural episode of Season 2, we discuss the pure joy of sports, specifically baseball. Tom Fox is joined by 3 rabid and lifelong Los Angeles Dodgers fans, each of whom fell in love with the Dodgers in a different era. Adam Turteltaub is the Chief Engagement & Strategy Officer at the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and Health Care Compliance Association. Louis Amestoy is a longtime digital journalist and the Editor and Publisher at The Kerr County Lead. Mike Whitmire is the Co-founder & CEO at FloQast.
They all share how and when they fell in love with the Dodgers, favorite memories and players, and what the Dodgers mean to them to this day. If you love all things baseball, this is the podcast for you.
What is the role of Artificial Intelligence in compliance? What about Machine Learning? Are you using ChatGPT? These are but three questions we will explore in this cutting-edge podcast series, Compliance and AI, hosted by Tom Fox, the award-winning Voice of Compliance. In this episode, Tom is joined by Jag Lamba for a discussion on the intersection of innovation and disruption.
Jag frames his thoughts on disruption through theories from Clayton Christensen and practical examples from ventures like Tesla. They explore how these concepts translate to the compliance world, particularly through the lens of artificial intelligence. Jag elaborates on the role of generative AI in streamlining third-party risk management, from data gathering to ongoing monitoring. He shares insights on embedding compliance into core business processes, reducing friction, and creating commercial value, highlighting success stories and future potential. They look into the use of RegTech for policy management and regulatory updates, emphasizing the importance of automation for modern compliance frameworks. The podcast showcases how AI can transform compliance from a costly necessity to a strategic asset that drives business efficiency and growth.
Welcome to the Daily Compliance News. Each day, Tom Fox, the Voice of Compliance, brings you compliance-related stories to start your day. Sit back, enjoy a cup of morning coffee, and listen to the Daily Compliance News—all from the Compliance Podcast Network. Each day, we consider four stories from the business world: compliance, ethics, risk management, leadership, or general interest for the compliance professional.
Where does creativity fit into compliance? In more places than you think. Problem-solving, accountability, communication, and connection – they all take creativity. Join Tom Fox and Ronnie Feldman on Creativity and Compliance, part of the award-winning Compliance Podcast Network.
Ronnie’s company, Learnings, and Entertainment, utilizes the entertainment devices people use to consume information in their everyday, non-work lives and apply it to important topics around compliance and ethics. It is not only about being funny. It is about changing the tone of your compliance communications and messaging to make your compliance program, policies, and resources more accessible. In this episode of Creativity and Compliance, Tom Fox and Ronnie Feldman are joined by Virginia MacSuibhne, former Chief Compliance Officer for Roche and Agilent Technologies.
Virginia shares her unique approach to making compliance accessible, engaging, and fun. Emphasizing the importance of a personal brand, she discusses her philosophy of authenticity and how it translates into creating clear, actionable, and enjoyable guidance. Her unconventional methods, including using infographics, breaking down complex policies, and injecting humor and personal interests, have significantly impacted employee engagement and compliance culture.
Virginia highlights the critical role of user experience (UX) in compliance, urging practitioners to rethink their policies and communication strategies. She shares anecdotes of her creative initiatives, such as wearing a unicorn costume to training sessions, integrating compliance messages into existing training programs, and making hotline experiences as user-friendly as possible. Her mantra, ‘What makes you weird makes you wonderful,’ encourages compliance professionals to bring their unique selves to their work to foster a more approachable and effective compliance environment.
Compliance Confessions – inspired by “Mean Tweets,” these 90-second commercials address misconceptions and excuses to promote speak-up culture and the E&C team as positive and helpful.
E&C Training Jams – a soulful singer banters with ethics & compliance, explaining policies, sharing examples, and debunking excuses.
Tales from the Hotline– Real speak up-themed stories about workplace behavior gone wrong.
Workplace Tonight Show!– E&C meets SNL Weekend Update, explaining corporate risk topics and why employees should care.
60-Second Communication & Awareness Shorts– A variety of short, customizable, music and multimedia, quick-hitter “commercials” promoting integrity, compliance, speaking up, and the E&C team as helpful advisors and coaches.
Custom Live & Digital Programing– Custom creative programming that balances the seriousness of the subject matter with a more engaging delivery. After all, you can’t bore people into learning.
The overarching theme of this episode is US President Donald Trump’s recent announcement that the country would create a bitcoin reserve—a veritable Fort Knox-style depository comprised of several select cryptocurrencies.
In our initial Spotlight segment, we’ll chat with Andrew Fei, a Hong Kong-based partner with the law firm King & Wood Mallesons, about developments in digital asset regulations in the US and what they mean for our region.
Following that, we will have a lengthier chat with the doyen of all things Bitcoin and FinTech, Henri Arslanian, in Dubai about what the Trump administration’s actions towards virtual assets will mean for the Middle East and the world more broadly, from markets and policy perspectives.
Henri Arslanian
Henri Arslanian is the co-founder and managing partner of Nine Blocks Capital Management, one of the largest institutional-grade crypto hedge funds globally and the first crypto hedge fund to be licensed by Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority. He is also the Host of The Future of Money podcast.
Henri is an author, speaker, educator, and arguably one of the foremost fintech experts and evangelists. He is a TEDx and global keynote speaker, a best-selling published author, and regularly featured in global media, including Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, BBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and the Financial Times.
His first book, “The Future of Finance: The Impact of FinTech, AI, and Crypto on Financial Services” (2019), was published by Palgrave Macmillan and ranked among Amazon’s global top 10 bestsellers in financial services, in addition to being recognized as one of the “Best FinTech Books of All Time” by Bookauthority.
Henri is also an adjunct professor at HKU, where he teaches the world’s first university-level FinTech course. He advises many of the world’s leading crypto exchanges, investors, financial institutions, and tech firms on their FinTech and crypto initiatives, as well as numerous governments, regulators, and central banks on FinTech and crypto regulatory and policy matters.
He was previously PwC’s crypto leader and partner and is a former chairman of the FinTech Association of Hong Kong. Prior to joining PwC, Henri worked for a FinTech start-up and spent many years with UBS Investment Bank in Hong Kong. He started his career as a financial markets and funds lawyer in Canada and Hong Kong and speaks five languages: English, French, Armenian, Spanish, and Mandarin.
Andrew Fei
Andrew Fei has over 15 years of experience in financial regulation, digital assets, fintech, structured finance, syndicated loans, and debt capital markets. Based in Hong Kong, he has been with the law firm of King & Wood Mallesons for a decade and is currently a partner.
Andrew has advised many major financial institutions, corporations, and fintech companies on a wide range of innovative cross-border tokenization and digital asset transactions, structured finance and derivatives transactions, close-out netting and collateral arrangements, syndicated financing transactions, Basel III regulatory capital instruments, securities financing transactions, financial regulatory matters, as well as digital asset-related transactions and arrangements.
He has been quoted as an expert on various topics in the international press, including the Financial Times, New York Times, International Financial Law Review, Risk.net, and South China Morning Post.
Andrew holds a master of laws degree from Harvard Law School and a double 1st class honors bachelor of laws degree from Cambridge University, where he was ranked second. He is qualified to practice law in New York and Hong Kong. In addition to his full-time legal practice, Andrew teaches banking law at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law.
Discussion:
The episode opens with Andrew Fei discussing recent US crypto regulatory developments. Then, Henri Arslanian, a leading voice in global crypto circles, shares his insights on the Trump administration’s decision to establish a cryptocurrency strategic reserve of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and Cardano. “This really may start paving the way for other countries to look at potentially acquiring Bitcoin as part of their strategic… their basket of reserves,” he said, referring to the ripple effect the US reserve move could have on global sovereign crypto adoption.
In the Spotlight segment, Andrew discusses with Regulatory Ramblings host Ajay Shamdasani the implications of recent US regulatory developments for Asia, the Middle East, and the rest of the world, such as the GENIUS Act and the recent White House Crypto Summit in Washington, DC.
Henri then shares his thoughts on the Trump administration’s decision to create a reserve composed of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and Cardano. While acknowledging it is a significant step forward for crypto, he said the move is not without criticism because it begs why certain virtual assets were chosen for the reserve and not others.
Reflecting on the 2024 US Presidential Election, Henri stressed that concerns over which party would be friendlier to the industry were partly why the recent US presidential election swung in Donald Trump’s favor. For many single-issue voters, the future of digital currencies was their paramount concern. In that sense, it could be said that 2024 was the election that the crypto bros bought.
Henri also shares his thoughts on what it means for the rest of the world if the US creates its crypto reserve, stating that the entry of institutional and sovereign players hints at a more distributed global adoption trend.
While the idea of a strategic reserve for critical assets or commodities is not new, it is curious why President Trump did so now when he was vehemently against crypto during his first term (2017-21). The popular press has suggested that Silicon Valley power players such as Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Elon Musk helped Trump change his mind and bring him around to the cause.
As Henri wrote in a recent piece on LinkedIn, “We should expect criticism—rightly so—regarding how the included coins were selected for this reserve. Bitcoin makes complete sense. One could also argue for ETH and perhaps SOL. However, the inclusion of XRP and ADA will likely be questioned.”
Solana and Ethereum are two platforms used by many American firms, including important companies like Visa and Blackrock.
As Henri noted in his recent article, the presidential action prohibited the purchase of additional crypto without a specific executive or legislative action. Simply put: “The U.S. is not going to buy new Bitcoin but rather keep the 200,000 BTC it already holds mainly via the seizure of Silk Road assets and the recovery of the Bitfinex hack.”
Moreover, mainland China purportedly holds around 190,000 Bitcoins, primarily acquired through its 2019 seizure from the PlusToken Ponzi scheme, and the UK allegedly owns 60,000 seized Bitcoins.
Regulatory Ramblings podcasts is brought to you by The University of Hong Kong – Reg/Tech Lab, HKU-SCF Fintech Academy, Asia Global Institute, and HKU-edX Professional Certificate in Fintech, with support from the HKU Faculty of Law.
The world of compliance took a surprising turn this February with the Executive Order issued by the President suspending FCPA investigation and enforcement. This was followed in short order by the dismissal, after six years of prosecution, of the two ex-Cognizant Technology executives charged with paying or authorizing the payment of bribes in that case. It now appears that both the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) FCPA units will be eviscerated and even shut down by the Administration. These significant legal rollbacks have ignited a series of conversations about the very essence and future of the compliance profession. As compliance professionals, many of us are left pondering, where exactly does compliance go from here?
I recently discussed this topic on the Compliance into the Weeds podcast with Matt Kelly, reflecting on his insights from a compliance event held in Boston he wrote about in a blog post in Radical Compliance. Matt highlighted a prevalent unease among compliance officers, underpinned by two primary concerns: the potential redundancy of compliance roles due to relaxed regulatory scrutiny and the impact of advancing technology, particularly AI, on compliance functions.
First, tackle the issue of regulatory rollback. The Trump administration has shown a clear inclination toward scaling back certain regulatory requirements, warranted or not. But there is a critical takeaway. It is not 2010, at the modern beginnings of compliance; it is 2025, and compliance is fundamentally different from what it was 15 years ago. Compliance practices and ethics programs have become deeply integrated into business operations, creating intrinsic value that transcends mere regulatory requirements. These practices have proven essential not only for managing regulatory risk but also for effectively managing broader business risks, operational efficiency, and corporate reputation.
Yet, despite the embedded nature of compliance in modern corporations, there’s a troubling scenario Matt outlined based on a keen observation from Kristy Grant-Hart. Could compliance functions gradually be absorbed by other departments? Could compliance tasks like hotline management drift toward HR, regulatory compliance fall into the hands of the legal department, and privacy compliance become the responsibility of IT security? Unfortunately, this scenario is not entirely implausible. Some short-sighted organizations might indeed take this fragmented route, viewing it as an opportunity to reduce headcount and costs.
Both Matt and I agree this is a dangerous and ultimately costly path. Fragmenting compliance capabilities across departments risks creating silos, precisely what compliance professionals have spent years fighting against. Silos impede effective communication andcloud transparency and hinder the swift, coordinated responses necessary to manage risk in today’s complex business environments. In short, this fragmentation threatens operational integrity, compliance effectiveness, and, ultimately, corporate profitability.
Instead of retrenching, compliance professionals must seize this uncertain moment as an opportunity. This is a time to demonstrate conclusively how compliance adds tangible business value beyond regulatory mandates. Hui Chen beautifully articulated this sentiment in her insightful blog post, urging compliance leaders to elevate their roles proactively. Chen recommends re-evaluating and broadening our compliance messaging, enhancing engagement with leadership, and demonstrating the clear business value compliance delivers to the organization.
Now, when we look at technology, particularly AI, there is palpable excitement and understandable anxiety within our compliance community. AI presents both extraordinary potential and a perceived threat. The crux of the concern is straightforward: could AI replace human compliance professionals?
AI undoubtedly enhances compliance capabilities significantly; it empowers us to manage larger, more complex data sets, swiftly identifies risks, automates repetitive compliance tasks, and enriches our analytical capabilities. But here’s the fundamental truth: AI requires a “human in the loop.” Human oversight, nuanced judgment, ethical considerations, and strategic thinking cannot, and should not, be outsourced entirely to algorithms.
Moreover, AI is not a threat but a tool that amplifies the effectiveness of compliance officers. Compliance professionals should proactively harness AI to enhance third-party risk management, improve whistleblower and speak-up programs, conduct more nuanced behavioral analytics, and streamline compliance training and communication. AI is here to augment, not eliminate, the vital role of the compliance officer.
Short-sighted individuals will always view AI as a cost-cutting opportunity. These individuals might attempt to unravel compliance functions, dispersing responsibilities across various departments supported by AI, thereby undermining the coherent strategic value a centralized compliance function provides.
Our response as compliance professionals should be unequivocal; robust compliance management and risk assessment capabilities are more critical now than ever. Compliance functions must remain centralized and strategic, leveraging technology to enhance rather than dilute their impact. We must clearly demonstrate to senior management how a strong, unified compliance function, bolstered by advanced technologies like AI, not only ensures regulatory compliance but actively strengthens operational resilience, business efficiency, and profitability.
In closing, Matt and I both agree these are indeed challenging and uncertain times for the compliance profession. However, they also represent a profound opportunity for growth and innovation and demonstrate the indispensable value compliance brings to businesses. Compliance professionals must rise to this challenge, proactively shaping the future rather than passively waiting for it to unfold.
As Matt aptly concluded, and I echo wholeheartedly, “I would bet on the durability of the ethics and compliance profession every day of the week.” I would only add that now is unquestionably the moment for compliance to step forward confidently, embracing innovation and clearly demonstrating its value as a strategic partner in business success.
Andrew Fei has over 15 years of experience in financial regulation, digital assets, fintech, structured finance, syndicated loans, and debt capital markets. Based in Hong Kong, he has been with the law firm of King & Wood Mallesons for a decade and is currently a partner.
