2019 Chief Compliance Officer Survey
Discover new insights for the future of ethics and compliance
Across all industries, an intensely heightened awareness of ethical behavior has elevated the need for executive leadership in the areas of ethics and compliance, and it is prompting change.
KPMG’s 2019 CCO Survey: Insights for the future of ethics and compliance explores how most organizations, independent of industry, are taking ethics and compliance risks seriously. Based on a survey of 220 chief ethics and compliance officers (CCOs) representing the largest organizations across multiple industries, the report identifies mature ethics and compliance areas and offers guidance for improvement where programs still need to advance.
The survey found a consensus across all industries on top compliance activities to enhance, refine, and integrate.
Recent high profile ethics failures illustrate the real impact of reputation risk and firms are seeking to avoid these costs by strengthening their abilities to mitigate the risk of misconduct. Organizations’ focus on investigations, ethics, and training supports this goal: Investigations to identify trends and root causes; ethics to clarify what is the “right thing to do” and to reinforce accountability for failure to do so; and training to reinforce the firm’s values and controls through meaningful example.
Chief Compliance Officers reported evolving program maturation due to heightened public, investor, and board awareness of ethics-related issues, as well as converging business models.
Industry composite ratings across all survey questions indicate increasing program maturation.
Responses on a scale from 0 "strongly disagree" to 5 "strongly agree".
"There is a growing consensus, across all industries, regarding the key areas organizations need to focus on and enhance, not only in ethics and investigations, but also on the maturity of ethics and compliance programs. This is likely driven not only by a commonality of risks but also converging business models."
Amy Matsuo, National Leader, Regulatory Insights, KPMG (US)
Survey findings showed slow but growing adoption of advances both in data and behavioral analytics, coupled with innovative technologies, will transform ethics and compliance in the coming years.
Compliance function leverages D&A and other technology processes to conduct root cause and trending analyses for compliance risk management purposes.
Rapid technological innovations—artificial intelligence, Natural Language Processing and blockchain—may offer significant competitive advantages but also demand proactive protection of the brand’s reputation. By investing in technology and/or tools for due diligence, surveillance, monitoring and reporting, CCOs can enhance ethics and compliance risk management and determine how to fully integrate and collaborate efforts for a robust approach.
31% of CCOs strongly agree that their compliance function uses data analytics and other technologies for risk management though nearly as many, 25%, do not agree.
Chief Compliance Officers indicate there is room for additional investment to maintain regulatory obligations and capture regulatory change.
24% do not agree that their compliance function has a process in place to capture changes in laws, rules, and regulations.
35% do not agree their compliance function maintains current inventories of regulatory obligations.
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