Employee stress is one of the biggest problems for businesses. It can lead to increased absenteeism, high employee turnover and low productivity. The American Psychological Association (APA) Work And Well-Being Survey 2021 found 79% of employees had experienced stress at work. The stress levels rise when you add compliance measures and regulatory demands into the mix. Here are some common reasons compliance teams face daily pressure and easy solutions to help them.
What Causes Stress For Compliance Teams
Is there any wonder compliance teams get stressed when they are in the thick of it all? Compliance teams have to make sure their work is in order, report to the board and keep the regulators happy at all times. Throw in some time constraints, with everybody wanting everything yesterday, it’s a whole load of stress. Here are some of the things compliance teams are dealing with regularly.
Audits
Compliance teams need to conduct audits at regular intervals to ensure compliance procedures are being followed. The team must also demonstrate to regulators that they have a clear audit trail.
Regulatory Reporting Deadlines
Must gather the necessary data for a company, interpret it correctly and share it with internal and external parties. Also, meeting regulatory reporting deadlines without fail to avoid hefty fines.
Monitoring Other Departments
The compliance team needs to ensure that all the departments are “singing from the same songsheet”. All employees need to know the policies, processes, and regulations. Also, to provide training when it is required.
Updating Policies And Procedures
The company policies and procedures need to be updated regularly. It is important to align these with laws and regulations for the relevant industry. These need to be monitored constantly to avoid problems with the regulators.
Third-Party Compliance
The compliance team also needs to ensure that third-party providers are also compliant. It’s all very well ensuring that your company is in order, but it is necessary to check your business partners.
Acting On Audit Recommendations
Compliance is a continual process for a company. When audits discover areas of concern, they must take appropriate action. The compliance team needs everybody to know what to do, how to do it, and in what timeframe.
How To Reduce Stress In Your Compliance Team
Most of the problems with stress involve time constraints. Your time is precious wherever you work in a business. But time is even more of an issue if you work in a compliance team. There is no point plodding on using your manual system if you are already struggling with time. It’s not going to get any better, so why keep doing the same thing?
Finding ways to manage it easily can be challenging. But there are great solutions out there for whatever you need. Using the services of RegTech companies can make a huge difference. These solutions can help compliance teams reduce their stress levels and are relatively easy to use. RegTech companies make everything as simple as possible for compliance employees, so they can help them gain some precious time.
Create Defendable Risk Assessments
Risk and compliance change every day. Keeping on top of it all takes bundles of dedication, organisation and time. The ability to create valid risk assessments and methodologies is vital. Rosie Davitt, Director for EMEA & North America at Arctic Intelligence, explains how their solution helps compliance professionals.
“The Business Wide Financial Crime Risk Assessment is a process or project that is dreaded by many compliance professionals. Rather than spend excessive time preparing spreadsheets that often fail to reflect the variations in content across an organisation to reflect an accurate view of their risks, Arctic provide the risk models, methodologies, workflow management and report creation to ease this burden. We provide efficient and effective platforms to produce robust and defendable risk assessments.”
Use An App To Speed Up Your KYC Checks
Money laundering prevention is also time zapping but is essential to protect your business. If a compliance team can save time here, it can reduce the stress levels straightaway. Christian Tsambikakis, Managing Director at Kerberos Compliance, explains how their KYC app can make KYC checks quicker and easier for compliance teams.
“In the area of money laundering prevention, expensive and complex isolated solutions currently dominate the market. We want to make money laundering compliance simple, affordable and actionable so that clients can focus on their business without obstacles and stress. This includes, for example, our Kerberos platform, which allows clients to manage all services, risk reports and KYC checks from one source at a glance, as well as our KYC app.
Our solution goes beyond just data delivery – we add superior compliance knowledge into each of our products. We guide our clients into a state of compliance whereby other offers leave you with the compliance problem.”
Use Embedded Compliance
It is possible to embed compliance into every single area of your business. You don’t have to struggle trying to make it all work manually. You can decide to automate everything, free up time and reduce stress levels. Alan Blanchard, Head of Business Development UK at Apiax, explains how their embedded compliance system helps compliance teams.
“Embedding compliance into any activity or process allows financial services companies to minimise the risks of human error, reduce operational costs and avoid potential penalties. This reduces stress and allows teams to focus on what matters most: realising business opportunities and creating great customer experiences.”
Show A Detailed Audit Trail
Regulators’ demands are stressful at the best of times. There are so many things to check the most organised compliance team still has moments of stress. A clear audit trail is vital. Mike O’Keefe, the General Manager (UK) at Corlytics, explains how their automated regulatory monitoring and impact assessment workflows help compliance teams.
“There are few things more painful than a brush with the regulator. Many of our clients have explained the demands, the additional work, the pressure from Senior Management, and ultimately the stress they all experience when the regulator comes knocking. This stress can arise in a couple of ways: 1. Has the firm missed something? 2. How can the firm attest to how a regulatory mandate has been handled, especially if enforcement is looming?
So, the reason that firms choose RegTechs like Corlytics is our ability to reduce that stress. Our automated regulatory monitoring ensures that regulatory updates originating from hundreds of regulatory authorities are automatically captured, assigned and can be tracked for action. Our impact assessment workflow provides an audit trail of how firms have triaged, assessed, and actioned a particular regulatory mandate, enabling attestation of action on regulatory obligations.
Removing this stress from the lives of compliance staff enables them to concentrate on the task of remaining compliant, putting their skills to best use and ensuring that the firm can evidence compliance with both the spirit and the letter of the law.”
Compliance Teams Of The Future
Compliance teams will always face an element of stress meeting compliance and regulatory requirements. But there are things you can do to make life easier for yourself. Stop trawling through spreadsheets and searching the internet for the latest regulatory changes. Automating as much as possible is the logical step to reduce stress for your compliance team. You can then have a well-organised compliance team that is happy and raring to go.
Sally Leslie
Sally creates B2B content for businesses, entrepreneurs, and startups. She has a PR degree and a background in business development and sales. She is passionate about motivation, time management, and the changing world of finance.