In their most recent survey performed last year, Thomson Reuters asked Compliance professionals from more than 300 financial services firms what their biggest concerns and challenges were for 2016 regarding navigating the deep and turbulent waters of continuing industry regulations. The findings are intended to help firms with planning, resource, and direction and to allow them to benchmark their own practices to determine whether their own strategies are in line with those in the wider industry.

Below are some key points of interest revealed in the survey results:

• No Letup in Regulation: 70% of firms are expecting regulators to publish even more regulation in the coming year with 26% expecting significantly more.
• Time Commitment: More than a third of firms continue to spend a whole day every week tracking and analyzing regulatory change.
• Resource Challenges and Outsourcing: There is a continued scarcity of skilled compliance personnel which forces firms to do more with less and putting the focus on the development of existing staff. A quarter of firms has opted to outsource at least part of their compliance functions to 3rd party providers due to lack of in-house compliance skills and the need for additional assurance on compliance processes.
• Technology and Reporting: Regulatory developments are driving technological change with the remit of compliance broadening to cover cyber risks as well as the assessment of new technology and applications to help manage more aspects of firm-wide compliance. In addition, there is an increase in the amount of information requests from regulators resulting in an expected increase in liaison with regulators.
• Focus on Regulatory Risk: Three-quarters of companies are expecting the focus on managing regulatory risk to continue to rise—due largely to greater demands on the management of conduct risk.

Do you think these predictions from last year are in line with what your team is seeing so far in 2016? Please email us today at [email protected] for a free copy of the full report and/or to discuss how Loffa Interactive can help you manage your firm’s compliance costs and processes!
Loffa Interactive Group
[email protected]
www.loffacorp.com