Accenture provides top-notch services in strategy & consulting, and operations for its clients. Samantha Regan is Managing Director and Global Lead for the Regulatory Remediation & Compliance Transformation group within Accenture’s Finance & Risk practice. I welcome her to this week’s show to discuss the Accenture Compliance Risk Study Report.

Accenture’s Compliance Risk See more +

Accenture provides top-notch services in strategy & consulting, and operations for its clients. Samantha Regan is Managing Director and Global Lead for the Regulatory Remediation & Compliance Transformation group within Accenture’s Finance & Risk practice. I welcome her to this week’s show to discuss the Accenture Compliance Risk Study Report.

Accenture’s Compliance Risk Study

I ask Samantha about the origin of the report. Samantha responds that each year, the team at Accenture gets together to observe and record what’s happening in the world of compliance. They seek to discover compliance officers’ key issues and concerns across various organizations. The next steps are developing a framework, conducting a survey, and collating the data. This is followed by “synthesizing those results and looking for the insights from the information that’s been provided and then developing the report off the back of that,” Samantha tells me.

Primary Compliance Risks In 2022

I asked Samantha to discuss the primary risks that they identified through the study. She replies that compliance folk’s biggest area of focus in 2022 is cybersecurity, ESG, and privacy. I ask her to identify some challenges compliance professionals face when responding to and managing these risks. New pressures are constantly being placed on compliance professionals, Samantha explains. “Compliance functions continue to evolve at a speed and scale and force the compliance function to change from being reactive to what was going on in the environment, to needing to be more proactive, building a function that is able to adapt.” She believes that by using data, compliance officers can “build a future-ready and risk-proof compliance function”.

Looking Ahead

I ask Samantha how she thinks compliance professionals should respond to risks in 2025. Would the trends highlighted in the study be accelerated? “I think the warp speed at which companies are operating is going to require compliance functions to have accurate and complete visibility into risks and mitigating controls across the business,” she comments. Data from the study suggests that compliance officials’ issues can be attributed to the lack of data; there needs to be enough information available to assess risk exposure. She mentions that there is increasing concern surrounding third-party risk. Samantha believes that with the increasing speed and evolution of risks, “the compressed transformation of organizations and industries is just going to put increasing pressure on compliance functions to continue the transition.” See less –