Cracking the Compliance Code: Compliance Technology Benchmarks & Benefits

Survey Says Compliance Technology a
“Necessary Investment,” But Underutilized

As organizations navigate a complex regulatory landscape, an effective compliance program is a must for keeping up with regulatory change and meeting compliance requirements. However, many organizations lag behind in leveraging compliance technology to meet those goals.

A compliance report conducted by KPMG surveyed chief compliance officers (CCOs) across multiple industries to benchmark compliance activities. The research found technology and data analytics to be the weakest category in organizations’ compliance programs, out of nine core components including risk assessment, governance and culture, and monitoring/testing, among others.

Compliance Technology: A Missing Link in Many Compliance Programs

In developing and maturing their compliance programs, CCOs reported the least progress with technology and analytics. However, organizations that work to advance their capabilities by investing in a compliance management system stand to gain significant benefit.

Amy Matsuo, a KPMG principal and the national leader of the firm’s U.S. Regulatory Insights Practice, stresses the value of building on strong compliance practices with integrated technology:

To advance your compliance effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability, it is essential to execute not only against a sound compliance framework but to continue to invest in compliance regulatory automation. Through compliance investment (versus simply ‘compliance cost’), you drive not only enhanced compliance integration to the compliance risks in your business practices and control environment, but the ability to further expand your compliance predictive analysis.

Yet, many businesses continue to struggle to integrate technology into their compliance programs. Let’s take a look at some of the survey’s key findings:

Compliance Management Technology By the Numbers

• Nearly a third of CCOs don’t leverage or don’t know if they leverage technology to support their organization’s compliance initiatives.
• 60% have not (or don’t know if they have) confirmed that their technology infrastructure aligns with compliance requirements or that significant compliance gaps have been addressed.
• Only 27% strongly agree that their organizations have a process in place to monitor and track regulatory change, while a mere 6% strongly agree that their technology infrastructure is proactively adapted to align with changes.
• Less than half (47%) of organizations have an enterprise-wide reporting system that includes compliance monitoring and is integrated across business functions/units.

The survey respondents also ranked their top three compliance challenges as:

1. Enhancing accountability
2. Improving data quality for risk data aggregation and risk reporting
3. Increasing compliance effectiveness and sustainability

The prevalence of these challenges may be unsurprising, especially considering the low investment in compliance management technology that could minimize or solve them.

The report concludes that technology-enabled integration and automation results in a more efficient and agile compliance program, calling compliance technology a “necessary investment in the compliance journey that will ultimately save costs and improve performance when properly implemented as part of a corporation’s strategy and operations.”

The Takeaway

Compliance management challenges are widespread, and failing to implement effective technology solutions causes organizations to lag behind in compliance program maturity.

In fact, a recent compliance benchmarking survey from McKinsey & Company confirms that institutions’ compliance maturity levels are particularly low in the areas of analytics, monitoring systems, and integration with enterprise risk management.

Based on those benchmarks, researchers concluded that organizations struggle to “crack the code” for effectively implementing automation and analytics and struggle to develop a technology strategy for digitizing compliance management.

Crack the Compliance Code with Quantivate Compliance Management

Compliance doesn’t have to be complicated. You can reap of the benefits of integrated technology through Quantivate’s dedicated compliance management system (CMS).

The Quantivate Compliance Solution equips organizations to:

• Track their compliance status in real time
• Improve accountability with built-in analytics and reporting tools
• Complete compliance testing and gap reports
• Assess and monitor compliance across risk areas such as regulatory change, policies, and consumer complaints
• And more…

In today’s regulatory environment, manual processes or disparate management solutions aren’t enough to meet compliance requirements and regulator expectations. Learn more about how Quantivate can help you take your compliance program to the next level: Request a free, personalized demo.