Consulting Opportunities in Finance: Compliance

Compliance expertise, while it has always been important, is more vital now than ever given current and pending financial-related regulations and legislation. In general, compliance is defined as adhering to or complying with a rule, regulation, policy, standard or law. Regulatory compliance involves corporations, e.g. banks, ensuring that their employees are aware of, and act to comply with pertinent regulations and laws.

Because the number of regulations is increasing, and business transparency is becoming more of a priority, financial institutions are continually trying to consolidate and optimize their compliance controls. In this way, the bank or financial entity can be in line with governance requirements without squandering unnecessary resources on repetitious efforts or inefficiencies. Additionally, there are federal and state penalties for not adhering to proper compliance regulation.

One of the most important pieces of legislation relating to compliance is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act which increased the emphasis on individual responsibility for upper management figures for the veracity of financial statements and reports.

Important compliance regulations and documents include:

Chapter 8 of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines – United States Sentencing Commission guidance on creating an effective compliance plan.
Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA) :Dictates how commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies can consolidate.
The Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) – Requires each federal agency to develop, document, and implement an agency-wide program to provide information security for the information and information systems that support the operations and assets of the agency.
Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) – Set of generally accepted measures, indicators, processes and best practices, to assist in maximizing the benefits derived through the use of information technology, and developing appropriate IT governance and control in a company.
Sarbanes–Oxley, Sarbox or SOX – Enhanced standards for all U.S. public company boards, management and public accounting firms.
Bank Secrecy Act – Assist[s] U.S. government agencies to detect and prevent money laundering.

What skills and education are required for a Compliance Job?

Candidates enter the world of finance from a fairly broad range of backgrounds, but the majority have some common skills and education.

KYC (Know Your Customer) Analyst / AML (Anti-Money Laundering):

Know your customer (KYC) is a regulation for financial institutions mandated by the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and USA PATRIOT Act, dictating that they must identify and collect pertinent information about their clients.

Anti-money laundering (AML) is a term mainly used to describe the controls that require financial entities to report and/or prevent money laundering activities. Anti-money laundering guidelines became prominent globally after 9/11 and the enactment of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Many Compliance Analysts will be required to be familiar with AML, KYC, BSA and other relevant compliance regulations. If the Compliance position involves transaction monitoring, the candidate will likely need knowledge of automated transaction monitoring systems such as GIFTS and MANTAS.

View all current compliance opportunities for consultants >>

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