Over the course of this month, I have presented a variety of specific tools and techniques for the compliance practitioner to utilize to continuous improve their compliance regime. They include financial audit, the culture audit, controls monitoring, various risk management strategies which can become continuous monitoring. The tools are both quantitative and qualitative. Pick and choose the right tools for your company’s business and compliance profile.
Continuous improvement through continuous monitoring or other techniques will help keep your compliance program abreast of any changes in your business model’s compliance risks and allow growth based upon new and updated best practices specified by regulators. A compliance program is in many ways a continuously evolving organism, just as your company is. You need to build in a way to keep pace with both market and regulatory changes to have a truly effective anti-corruption compliance program. The 2012 FCPA Guidance makes clear the “DOJ and SEC will give meaningful credit to thoughtful efforts to create a sustainable compliance program if a problem is later discovered. Similarly, undertaking proactive evaluations before a problem strikes can lower the applicable penalty range under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. Although the nature and the frequency of proactive evaluations may vary depending on the size and complexity of an organization, the idea behind such efforts is the same: continuous improvement and sustainability.”
Three key takeaways:
- Your compliance program should be continually evolving.
- There are a variety of tools for continuous improvement which will enhance both your compliance and business processes.
- DOJ and SEC will give meaningful credit to thoughtful efforts to create a sustainable compliance program if a problem is later discovered.
