Do compli­ance offi­cers now need to learn how to program?

The Philanthropist: There’s hardly a sector or level of the economy that’s not been affec­ted by digi­ta­li­sa­tion, and the non-profit sector is no diffe­rent. How does this affect compliance?

Rita Pikó: There are some sectors, like the insu­rance sector, which have almost comple­ted their digi­tal jour­ney. As a result, the compli­ance proces­ses that apply to these products have been digi­ta­li­sed at the same time along with this. A compli­ance offi­cer, or the compli­ance depart­ment, is no longer really in the posi­tion to be able to ‘manu­ally’ check or moni­tor these auto­ma­ted proces­ses retro­s­pec­tively. As a result, the compli­ance team should be invol­ved in the digi­ta­li­sa­tion of a busi­ness area from the off: it’s the only way to make sure that the algo­rithms are programmed in a suita­bly compli­ance-focu­sed fashion.

How does this change a compli­ance officer’s tasks?

In short, compli­ance offi­cers need to under­stand the digi­ta­li­sed busi­ness and digi­ta­li­sed proces­ses. Only once they’ve done that can they deter­mine which legal issues are likely to be connec­ted to this, like confi­den­tia­lity, data protec­tion, anti-trust, discri­mi­na­tion, etc.

Can you give us an example?

Let’s say that a company is digi­ta­li­sing steps of its appli­ca­tion progress, passing respon­si­bi­lity for making certain decis­i­ons onto algo­rithms. It is important that these algo­rithms are programmed to take into account certain requi­re­ments, such as data protec­tion and equality.

Do compli­ance offi­cers now need to learn how to program?

There’s no doubt that being curious about chan­ges, and remai­ning open-minded towards them, really helps. But they don’t need to learn how to program. It is possi­ble to build a bridge to the tech­ni­cal side of things by having a person in the team who acts as a sort of ‘trans­la­tor’ between compli­ance and IT. Some compa­nies are alre­ady hand­ling this very well in practice.

Will the digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion also bring bene­fits for compliance?

Abso­lut­ely! Entire compli­ance proces­ses can be opti­mi­sed, for exam­ple, in connec­tion with provi­ding advice or answe­ring gene­ral compli­ance-rela­ted ques­ti­ons. Chat bots can handle all that auto­ma­ti­cally. The use of big data is another exam­ple. Evalua­ting huge quan­ti­ties of data rela­ting to busi­ness proces­ses can gene­rate new findings for compli­ance. This enables orga­ni­sa­ti­ons to iden­tify compli­ance risks quicker and in a more targe­ted manner, and to respond to them accor­din­gly. In addi­tion, hand­ling compli­ance digi­tally enables some aspects to be visua­li­sed more quickly and easily, which also boosts the quality of compli­ance. Ulti­m­ately, digi­ta­li­sing stan­dar­di­sed compli­ance tasks enables the compli­ance offi­cer or compli­ance depart­ment to focus on the most important and most central points. These are just a few aspects of how digi­ta­li­sa­tion can be used to the bene­fit of compliance.

What does this mean for non-profit organisations?

I see the process of digi­ta­li­sa­tion as provi­ding criti­cally important assis­tance for hand­ling compli­ance in the future, inclu­ding at non-profit organisations.

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Event note — Save the Date
On July 1, 2020, ZHAW and StiftungSchweiz orga­nise a confe­rence on «Compli­ance at Foun­da­ti­ons and Asso­cia­ti­ons» in Winter­thur. Further infor­ma­tion to follow.