Ten years ago, Compliance was all about policies and procedures that are mere guidelines that hugely unaddressed how to measure compliance effectiveness, identify the metrics, and look at the accounting data. Internationally recognized anti-fraud and compliance thought leader Vincent Walden shares his insights on how far we’ve come since then. He talks about the practical strategies, tools, and techniques used in fraud detection and prevention applied to compliance and how data and data analytics have evolved, and his overall inspiring perspective in this conversation.
Major takeaways discussed in the episode:
✔️ Why Vincent’s involvement in fraud prevention in the early years of his career taught him strategies about the use of data and data analytics in compliance. “When a company was investigated for FCPA, what was the first thing that they asked for? They wanted emails and payment transactions. And why weren’t we looking at those proactively? And that’s really what drove my interest in building proactive compliance programs because I saw so many FCPA investigations that finding those improper payments was what they were making and breaking the cases. And that’s what drove a lot of my passion for building out these compliance program models.”
✔️ As an early advocate of using data in compliance solutions, Vincent saw how vital the melding is of internal audit and compliance. “Internal audit understood the books and records and compliance understood the legal risks. The magic was when the two worked together. That’s how it started. We’ve seen compliance become more mature, particularly over the last two to three years.”
✔️ Beginning in 2017, the DOJ started talking about the use of data in compliance. This changed the reception in the marketplace, empowering CCOs to have sufficient access to operational transactional data sources that were spot-on and accelerated proactive discussions. Compliance professionals will become more data-driven as time goes on.
✔️ Data sharing consortium in the future. According to Vincent, the idea of companies sharing their risk algorithms without having to share their data to build better, data-driven compliance programs and sharing best practices is something fascinating and worthy looking forward to.
✔️ The creation of A&M’s Digital Twin service is Vincent’s dream compliance monitoring platform. “This allows us to pull in client-relevant payments data and risk scores in a cost-effective way. That means what used to take me 300+ hours of staff time to pull payment data out of a system, and all the mathematical gymnastics put in a database and build out reports now takes me less than 30 hours. That’s a 10x reduction in time and a 10x reduction in fees.”
Vincent Walden is a Managing Director with Alvarez & Marsal’s Disputes and Investigations in New York. He specializes in forensic data analytics, continuous controls monitoring, information governance, and legal discovery services. His primary focus area is in providing leading technology perspectives on proactive compliance programs and reactive investigations.
LinkedIn: @vincewalden
Email: vwalden@alvarezandmarsal.com
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About Thomas Fox:
Thomas Fox, the Compliance Evangelist®, is one of the leading writers, thinkers, and commentators on anti-bribery and anti-corruption compliance. In this latest edition of The Compliance Handbook, he continues to arm seasoned compliance professionals and those new to the realm with the practical, actionable guidance and tools needed to design, create, implement and continually enhance a best practices compliance program.
 
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