Better Workflows for Improved Risk and Compliance Management

Businesses in the financial sector require better risk and compliance performance as they grow. It is easier to ensure compliance and manage risks when the business is small. There are only a few clients, and the risk and compliance teams are aware of all the issues and problems that need to be mitigated. As the business grows and workloads expand, risk and compliance become more difficult to manage. Since it is impossible for the risk and compliance teams to have in-depth knowledge about each activity and client across the organization, there are now blind spots for risk and compliance teams that can result in mismanagement.

A common approach to this problem is to simply expand the size of the risk and compliance teams as the business grows, but this practice does not result in sustainable improvements in risk and compliance. It is necessary to increase the number of people dedicated to risk and compliance as the business expands but increasing the number of people alone is not enough. Bigger businesses do not just need more employees; more employees result in more tasks to manage for upper management and can also result in more issues going undetected. What businesses need is a better way to work – a way that allows them to stay ahead of risk and compliance issues.

This necessitates the use of risk and compliance technology. There are many processes and tasks related to risk and compliance that can be transformed only with the use of modern risk and compliance technology. The difference in efficiency and speed that is achieved by infusing technology into risk and compliance processes is immense. Looking at some of the things risk and compliance managers need to do regularly and how those processes are transformed shows how useful technology can be for financial organizations.

Looking for Information

One of the biggest hidden time-sinks in risk and compliance is the time spent by risk and compliance professionals looking for the information or data that they need. Risk and compliance professionals work with the whole organization as they are responsible for risk and compliance in all the departments of the organization.

This means that they need information and data from the other departments. Getting this information can take a lot of time. The risk/compliance expert much reach out to each department and ask for the information they need and wait for a reply. Risk and compliance management platforms completely redesign the workflow to increase efficiency. Instead of depending on a ‘’pull’’ data strategy, where the data needs to be pulled from other departments, platforms use a ‘’push’’ data strategy, where the data is automatically routed to the risk/compliance team.

This is accomplished by providing a central platform for all departments to upload risk and compliance information. Instead of having to look for it, risk/compliance team members can access all the data they need on the same central platform.

It is necessary to increase the number of people dedicated to risk and compliance as the business expands but increasing the number of people alone is not enough. Click To Tweet

Project Management

The biggest problem that businesses face as they expand is a lack of visibility into risk and compliance projects and tasks throughout the enterprise. When the business is small it is easy for management to be aware of all the work that the risk and compliance teams need to look at across the enterprise. It is also easy to understand overall risk and compliance levels. However, as the business expands, and the required information is spread out across multiple spreadsheets, documents, and email threads, this visibility is lost. Management ends up depending solely on periodically generated reports.

Risk and compliance technology platforms enable enterprise-wide visibility into risk and compliance. Since all the risk and compliance data is stored on the same platform and all the risk and compliance activities are being carried out on the same platform, it is easy to view all the information that management needs. Instead of having to wait for periodic reports, management gets real-time metrics related to risk and compliance in easy-to-understand dashboards.

This has a profound effect on an organization’s ability to enhance compliance levels and decrease risk levels. Instead of waiting to see the issues at the end of the month, managers can see the issues the organization is facing in real-time and immediately intervene. It also becomes easier to improve risk and compliance processes. Real-time metrics mean improvements in risk and compliance performance are immediately visible, which enables management to try different strategies to understand the best strategy.

Smarter workflows are recognized as one of the 3 most important features for businesses in 2021 and beyond. For more details on the most critical parts of a successful risk and compliance framework download our complimentary whitepaper: Reducing Effort & Increasing Visibility in Compliance: 3 Must-Have Technology Capabilities.