- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
We at Compliance Week began our sixth annual benchmarking survey shortly after Trump won the 2024 election in November, collecting responses from 227 people as his administration was forming, but closing our poll before he was inaugurated in January. The result is a unique view into a rapidly changing world, full of uncertainty around policy, business dealings, tariffs and global alliances.
At a time when the Trump administration is rewriting many of the rules, the compliance function is being embraced as a strategic partner to the C-suite and board. The new objective: risk-assess the implications of Trump’s confetti of executive orders and actions.
Compliance officers are coping with uncertainty following President Trump’s election win, with fewer choosing to disclose their political affiliations in this year’s pulse survey. Since Inauguration Day, the President’s actions have signaled a capricious era of compliance, one where respect for dissent might be in question.
Demand for compliance officers in the post-Covid era finally cooled off. Our most recent survey pegged average salaries (plus bonuses) for chief compliance officers (CCOs) and chief ethics and compliance officers (CECOs) in 2024 at $295,000, down 10 percent from the average of $329,000 for CCOs and CECOs in 2023 and well below the high-water mark of $335,000 in 2022. A total of 79 CCOs and CECOs responded to the survey, representing 35 percent of all compliance officers who responded.
Despite years of attention, male compliance professionals remain more highly compensated than women. The average salary among the 79 compliance professionals who provided compensation information, was $235,247, far lower than in previous years. The reason for the salary drop is unclear, but the fact that a larger number of compliance professionals from small companies participated, and more women provided salary information, compared to past years, certainly could be factors.
Three of four respondents said their employers have policies and procedures in place that govern employee use of unauthorized communications on their cell phones. Another 11 percent of the 179 practitioners who answered the question were currently drafting new policies under regulatory scrutiny. Fifteen percent reported that they had no off-channel communications policies in place.
For the first time, a majority of compliance teams using AI to assist them in their work. About 56 percent of compliance teams used AI in 2024—a sizable jump from the 41 percent who relied on AI in 2023.
Site powered by Webvision Cloud
