How Technology Increases the Speed of Compliance Workflows

It can be challenging to quantify the extent of improvements a business will observe when implementing compliance technology. Most businesses understand that some processes will be faster and others more efficient, but they may also suspect that improvements will be incremental. A core reason so many experienced people have this view is due to their own experience with compliance management. Compliance is often perceived as something that is cumbersome and slow.

It is easy to see why compliance management can seem burdensome by the employees that do not work directly in a compliance function. Any time an employee makes a mistake or comes up with a new idea, it needs to be analyzed by the compliance experts. Ensuring compliance can take a long time, which can add delays to projects and processes, which can create a burdensome impression of the compliance department.

The way compliance management platforms help manage tasks and activities is another great example of transformative technology. Click To Tweet

However, compliance technology can completely eliminate such perceptions and make organizations more compliance conscious by making compliance faster and easier.

Compliance Timelines

The easiest way to demonstrate the extent to which compliance technology improves compliance management processes is to look at how the timeline of routine compliance processes advance with manual compliance management and compare that timeline with the speed of the same processes once compliance technology has been implemented. Here is how compliance tasks are carried out in both hypothetical scenarios:

Manual Compliance

Day 0 – An employee does not complete the documentation needed to fulfill KYC requirements for a new customer

Day 20 – A periodic audit is started to discover any compliance issues

Day 40 – The audit has been completed and audit reports is submitted to management, they become aware of the compliance failure when they read the audit findings

Day 40 – An email is sent to the employee, the compliance department, and relevant managers alerting them that there is a problem that needs to be solved

Day 41 – The bank’s employees get in touch with the customer and request the needed documentation

Day 43 – The customer submits the required documentation

Day 43 – The employee emails everyone to tell them that the compliance failure has not been corrected

Automated Compliance

Day 0 – An employee does not complete the documentation needed to fulfill KYC requirements for a new customer

Day 0 – The compliance management platform instantly detects that required documentation is missing

Day 0 – A notification is generated and sent to the relevant employees that a compliance issue has been detected

Day 0 – The management creates a task on the compliance management platform to manage the problem

Day 0 – The bank employees get in touch with the customer and request the needed documentation

Day 2 – The customer submits the required documentation

Day 2 – The employee updates task status on the compliance management platform and a notification is sent to all managers that the issue has been mitigated

A Change in Approach

The above hypothetical scenario highlights the most overlooked factor that enables compliance technology to deliver a transformative improvement for businesses. Compliance technology does not just deliver an improvement in the current compliance processes – it enables new compliance processes which are incredibly faster. In the example above, the real change wasn’t compliance technology making it faster to audit or send out a message – even though both parts of the process do become faster – but the fact that compliance monitoring means that businesses do not have to wait for an audit to discover the compliance issue.

Similar improvements are implemented across the compliance domain. The way compliance management platforms help manage tasks and activities is another great example of transformative technology. Most smaller banks still rely on email threads to resolve compliance issues. These email threads can be hard to follow and add a lot of delays to the process. Compliance management platforms provide a central platform for the organization to collaborate without needing to create long email threads.

There are two major ramifications of compliance management technology which help change the way compliance is perceived within the organization. The first, which we’ve covered, is the increase in speed. Faster compliance processes make compliance less frustrating for all involved, which makes people feel more positive towards compliance.

The second major factor is compliance transparency. When compliance is being managed manually, the other employees often wonder why compliance processes take so much time. Compliance technology provides a central platform for compliance tasks, which enables every authorized employee to track compliance progression. The employees can see what is being done to ensure compliance with laws and regulations. This increases their awareness of compliance – not only will employees that understand compliance better be more sympathetic to slowdowns in processes caused by compliance requirements, but they will also be more conscious of ensuring compliance when carrying out a task.

Interested in seeing how your organization can transform its compliance management platform and reap the benefits? Get in touch with our compliance experts for a demonstration of the Predict360 Compliance Management solution which has been endorsed by the American Bankers Association

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