Compliance & Technology

Linking my experience in compliance (as well as in legal in my previous career) with the daily lives of the readers of this magazine, I can say that the use of data has always been by my side, following all my steps in conscious and planned means, from an early age I was lucky enough to understand the power of technology.

I have always detailed to the teams that I am lucky enough to lead, or in the classes I was taught in my academic life, that there are ten essential steps for implementing a good management model:

1- Understand your business;

2- Know your Customer;

3- Have a team better than you;

4- Adopt a method;

5- Establish memory;

6- Master your data;

7- Create partnerships (internal and external);

8- Escape from subjectivity;

9- Pay close attention to trends (especially market and regulatory) and

10-Never stop moving.

I will not dare to address all ten steps in this article due to being a short article; therefore, I will stick to those intrinsically related to technology.

 It is essential to highlight that the field of attention of a compliance officer is an area in constant and accelerated expansion. Currently, there is no room for compliance that only faces already established roles, such as supervision and compliance with policies, without delving into and dealing with ‘modern and hot’ such issues as environmental, social, and governance (ESG), data protection, risk reputation, conduct risk and consumer protection, among others.

This scenario of multiple coverage points leads to the inescapable need to use steps 5 (establish memory) and 6 (master your data) to carry out the proper use of data, in which all the necessary data (millions of customer data - with due anonymization - trends and regulatory notes, market data, key performance indicators and processes and internal flows, among others) must compose an adequate data lake, which allows the correct interpretation of such data, through big data tools, machine learning and artificial intelligence, for the construction of risk maps, dashboards and monitoring and tests based on analytics that allow us to predict and mitigate problems, in addition to ensuring compliance.

Facing restricted budgets, in the absolute majority of cases, as well as lean teams and a regulatory requirement that grows geometrically, it is not possible for a compliance officer to build and conduct an effective compliance plan if there is not a robust structure through the use of technology; therefore step 7 (create partnerships) becomes essential for a successful path. Throughout my career, I have always sought and built solid, fruitful, and partner relationships with technological areas of companies I have gone through.

Thus, with a method allied to a strong foundation in technology and an absolute focus on the customer (be it the final customer, the internal customer, or external stakeholders such as regulators and supervisors), we will certainly comply