MyComplianceOffice Blog

Regulations, frameworks, policies and controls define the day-to-day of the Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) and their teams. It’s fair to say that it is an important yet often troublesome undertaking to make sense of what can often be described as monitoring spaghetti. At the same time, the teams also need to ensure they are keeping senior execs and the Front Office engaged and compliant.

So how can the CCO set regulatory priorities, identify policy and procedure gaps and understand compliance obligations?

At a recent compliance round-table event in Hong Kong, compliance experts, executives, and chief compliance officers shared their firms’ challenges in keeping pace with regulatory change within the financial sector. They also discussed the increasing demands placed upon compliance teams, emerging opportunities, and the role of technology in more effectively managing regulatory risk and upholding compliance obligations.

The 1MDB scandal saw Malaysia’s former Prime Minister jailed for 12 years with a fine of 210m Malaysian Ringgit (USD $46.8m) - and the end of the 61-year political dominance of the country’s Barisan Nasional coalition political party.

For every registered firm with the SEC, it’s not a matter of if you’ll be examined but when. COVID-19 drove a necessity for the SEC to adapt its examination processes from traditionally in-person activities to remote. As a result, companies operating in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region must now be ready and able to support the SEC in its procedures.

Small businesses and financial firms have undergone seismic shifts over the last few years. The pandemic forced employers to rethink their positions on remote and hybrid working models, and employees have come to expect greater flexibility. PwC’s survey of over 18,000 workers across Asia-Pacific (APAC) reveals that 66% expect to perform their roles in a hybrid capacity 12 months from now. In contrast, 24% expect fully-remote and only 10% fully in-person.