Compliance officers are under increasing pressure to demonstrate to senior officers, their boards, and regulators that the compliance function works. At the Compliance Week 2012 conference, a panel of executives shared their approaches to measuring compliance program effectiveness. Measuring the effectiveness of a compliance initiative can help an organization better manage its risks and prioritize […]
Internal Controls
Posted inInternal Controls
The Fine Art of Managing Internal Investigations
Internal investigations are a crucial component of a robust compliance program; failure to investigate properly and resolve allegations of wrongdoing could damage your company’s credibility with regulators down the road. At Compliance Week 2012, compliance and legal executives shared their approaches. At Verizon, for example, investigations are prioritized depending on the type of complaint to […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
Improving Internal Audit & Control
Internal audit and control functions have long been war-weary parts of Corporate America, bombarded by ever-more risks to monitor and disclosures to make. Two sessions at the Compliance Week 2012 conference explored how audit and compliance executives can rally for a counter-offensive. All the changes of the last decade—the rise of new technologies, revisions to […]
Posted inInternal Controls
COSO Decides Against Integrated Frameworks, For Now
Despite calls for integration, the update to the COSO internal control framework will not include any effort to fold in the concepts of COSO’s Enterprise Risk Management framework. Marie Hollein, president and CEO of Financial Executives International, said the COSO board has considered and dismissed the idea of integrating COSO’s ERM framework into its Internal […]
Posted inInternal Controls
Risk-Management Failures Highlight the Need for More Scrutiny
Companies are showing improvement in risk management—but they’re not quite there yet. As recent problems at Walmart and JPMorgan indicate, companies still have more work to do on refining risk-management systems. And those high-profile cases have pushed companies to re-double their efforts. One of the top things companies are doing is to focus more on […]
Posted inInternal Controls
Best Buy Debacle Offers Lessons in Crisis Management
When Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn resigned suddenly in April over allegations of inappropriate personal conduct, it reminded many in Corporate America of the resignation of Mark Hurd from Hewlett-Packard, an episode widely considered to have been poorly handled by H-P’s board of directors. Yet now that the dust has settled on Best Buy’s CEO […]
Posted inInternal Controls
Regulators’ No Admission Settlement Policy Under Fire
The longstanding policy among financial regulators to negotiate consent judgments on a “neither-admit-nor-deny” basis is increasingly under fire by critics who believe such settlements are too lenient and may encourage further financial fraud. On May 17, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Financial Services held a hearing to examine these settlement practices. Among the […]
Posted inInternal Controls
Electronic Information Deluge Putting a Strain on Records Management
Despite increased resources and good intentions, companies are still fumbling when it comes to executing a comprehensive information management program that balances the unique needs of physical and electronic documents. That’s the overarching conclusion of the latest Iron Mountain Compliance Benchmark Report, an analysis developed from more than 4,000 compliance risk assessments with input from […]
Posted inInternal Controls
Maintaining an Effective Compliance Program
Companies everywhere know that demonstrating an effective compliance program is more important today than ever before. Where the real challenge lies is in assuring that the compliance department maintains the best structure possible as regulations change and as the business evolves. “One of the biggest challenges for compliance programs today, particularly some of your more […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
Integrating Risk Appetite and Risk Management
JPMorgan Chase’s recent admission that a trader in London lost $2 billion trading in credit derivatives is yet another reminder of the importance of spelling out a company’s risk appetite and integrating it with risk-management practices. Three years after the financial crisis, it’s clear that companies are still struggling with how to manage risk in […]
