Articles

The SEC has already or may yet update its periodic reporting requirements on a number of fronts. Most of these relate to ESG, KPI and non-GAAP disclosures. Meanwhile, COVID-19 continues to require dynamic responses. Public companies have been monitoring and rapidly adapting to a wide array of developments impacting periodic reporting disclosure practices over the...

New features are designed to help financial services firms meet increasing demands for digitizing compliance programs  Introduces automation technology for managing compliance of legal documents and marketing materials/financial promotions  Adds unique functionality for managing side letter compliance  Expands capabilities for reviewing and approving marketing materials in line with the SEC’s new Marketing Rule  Integrates e-learning...

Veriff's IDV and KYC services cross-reference users against government-issued IDs from 190 countries. The company experienced 600 percent revenue growth in 2020. Veriff has raised a Series B funding round worth $69 million. The coronavirus pandemic has spurred strong demand for remote identity verification, and the company says it plans to use the funds to...

The Biden administration has signaled numerous cross-border enforcement updates that carry compliance implications, including updated anti-corruption, financial and sanctions measures. President Biden has repeatedly promised to make the fight against corruption in the U.S. and abroad a central part of his administration. He has nominated a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman who many expect...

Washington D.C. (April 9, 2021) —  The SEC’s Division of Examinations today issued a Risk Alert to highlight observations from recent exams of investment advisers, registered investment companies, and private funds offering environmental, social, and governance (ESG) products and services. Click here to see the Risk Alert, and check out everything the SEC has done in Response to Climate...

In-house counsel and compliance both assess risk. As such, they often vie with one another. A collaboration, however, can serve to raise both up and significantly enhance a company's risk assessment overall. Lawyers get a bad rap – not just as the subject of lawyer jokes.  (This is not an invitation to recite lawyer jokes). ...

With the SEC poised to take action on ESG compliance, companies are at an impasse: There’s no clear direction on ESG reporting and no agreement about what ESG compliance even means. Answers to the myriad questions around ESG reporting remain elusive. Standardized — possibly mandated — ESG reporting is likely imminent in the U.S. And...

California continues to update its privacy regulations. In the latest move, the CPPA board members were appointed, with Professor Jennifer M. Urban named as chair, and further amendments were put in place. California is continuing to make news with respect to its privacy laws. California's Attorney General recently announced the approval of new amendments to...

Everyone knows to have a rainy day fund. Yet, few people have one, despite the fact that cars break down, roofs leak, and pandemics hit. Today I listened to this story of a businessman and it reminded me of the responsibility businesses have to build rainy day funds. After 22 years in business, this man was unable...

With a Series C on the books, Blue dot (formerly VATBox) will expand operations across North America and double its workforce over the next year. The company offers an AI VAT recovery automation system, among other solutions. The tax compliance platform Blue dot today announced it has secured a Series C worth $32 million. Formerly...

Expansion to Speed and Simplify Search, Analytics and Accessibility Of Enterprise Communications Data  AWS-hosted and AI-powered Platform Greatly Improves Speed and Accuracy for Data Retrieval of Email, Messaging, Voice Communications and Structured Data to Help Customers Meet Compliance Obligations  NEW YORK (April 6, 2021) – Behavox, which uses AI to enable enterprises to organize and refine...

New Solution to Reduce Compliance Risk for Wealth Management, Insurance Firms Selected by leading global financial services organizations, SURVEIL-X Suitability is powered by new risk detection capabilities which address complex regulatory requirements Hoboken, NJ (April 6, 2021) – Financial services organizations that provide investment advice and which sell life insurance, annuities and other wealth products...

Countries and economic unions around the world are adopting national privacy laws. Rather than state-by-state privacy legislation, wouldn’t it be easier to have one all-encompassing privacy law for the U.S.? Opinion Imagining a National Business Landscape Without a National Privacy Law If the current trend continues and more legislative bodies recognize the critical importance of...

What happens when a backlog of COVID-related claims meets a mountain of faulty, false or missing data? Payers don't pay on time -- or at all. Here's how the pandemic is impacting the health care industry's chronic struggle with manual reviews. Most states can levy huge, frequently multimillion-dollar, sanctions on health care payers that do...

NASA announced yesterday that asteroid Apophis will not strike the Earth for at least another 100 years. That’s good news, given that the impact we had feared for 2036 could have killed more than 10 million people. The question is, will we prepare for an eventual impact? The last time we lost tens of millions of humans on...

With the sentencing of Tony Hernandez, brother to Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, the Southern District of New York and DOJ continue their work to dismantle a corrupt multinational drug trafficking network. Update: Former Honduran congressman Tony Hernández was sentenced March 30, 2021, to life In prison and ordered to forfeit $138.5 million for distributing...

Historic level of enforcement action during national health emergency continues March 26, 2021 – The Department of Justice announced an update today on criminal and civil enforcement efforts to combat COVID-19 related fraud, including schemes targeting the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program and Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs. As of today,...

Is there any discipline that keeps you more on your toes than Compliance? It has been gripping to observe the compliance function as it has evolved from administering regulatory risk and compliance to now include serving as the ethical and moral guardians of a company. There are, however, still decisions that sit outside of the...

Expands Kroll Responder MDR and XDR services and launches next-generation managed SOC NEW YORK (March 25, 2021) – Kroll, the world’s premier provider of services and digital products related to governance, risk and transparency, today announced that it has acquired Redscan, an award-winning cybersecurity services provider based in the United Kingdom. With the addition of Redscan and...

When I was about 10 years old, a neighbor of mine had a picture of an overweight woman on her fridge, cut out from a magazine. She told me it served as a reminder not to overeat. Some 20 years later, I read about a study that found that people who put pictures of lean...

Significant increase in the number of riots, demonstrations and vandalism, as terrorism events decline, means civil unrest is now the main political risk exposure for companies, resulting in significant losses and insurance claims. Impact of political violence can cause business disruption beyond physical property damage. COVID-19 pandemic is likely to fuel further disturbances. Business continuity planning...

As Well As Reducing Budgets, The COVID-19 Pandemic Has Heightened Organizational Risks and the Need for Audit Oversight Stamford, CT (March 24, 2021) – A September 2020 study of 299 internal audit organizations showed that the function faced both declining budgets and a significantly expanded workload in 2020, according to Gartner, Inc. “For many heads...

Chief Compliance Officers can add value to their organizations in many ways -- but are they at liberty to do so? Michael Volkov suggests it's time to give these multi-talented professionals more room to roam. Chief compliance officers are talented professionals. As Donna Boehme always emphasizes, CCOs are subject matter experts in compliance risks, controls...

ATLANTA, March 23, 2021 -- OneTrust today announced it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Convercent, a provider of ethics and compliance cloud software. The acquisition will build on OneTrust's investments in creating technology that brings together privacy, security, data governance, ethics and compliance, GRC, third-party risk, and ESG into a single operational workflow. Convercent's technology, 750...

Five of the top 10 risks identified as "high impact" are operational in nature, while the rest are macroeconomic and strategic. What do they all point to? A decade of disruption, says Protiviti's Jim DeLoach. He shares the Top 10 list revealed by a recent Protiviti and NC State University study and offers words of wisdom to...

The Certificate of Cloud Auditing Knowledge (CCAK) offers IT professionals mechanism to address challenges related to transparency, complexity and interdependency within the scope of cloud environments SEATTLE – March 22, 2021 – The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and ISACA today announced the availability of the Certificate of Cloud Auditing Knowledge (CCAK), the first credential available for industry professionals to demonstrate their...

Despite Several Years of Budget Growth, Compliance Median Headcount is Trending Down Stamford, CT (March 18, 2021) – A study of 117 organizations in the second half of 2020 showed that compliance department spending was projected to plateau in 2020 after several years of rapid growth, according to Gartner, Inc. In the period from 2017-2019 total compliance...

As the pandemic starts to recede, compliance officers face a Channel Explosion: more data streams than ever before, which makes monitoring risk in a diverse IT environment harder than ever. And of course, this challenge comes amid an increasingly complex regulatory environment and at a time when we're all striving to leverage technology more cost...

HR and compliance pros have struggled to keep up with ever-changing regulations over the past year. Now, return-to-work plans raise myriad compliance concerns. ADP’s Ellen Feeney discusses 2021 workforce trends as businesses reopen. No matter how diligent a company has been in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, many HR professionals have struggled to keep...

Colleges and universities, like every other type of organization, fall victim to wrongdoing. But unlike many other institutions, boards of trustees often fail to maintain mechanisms that can catch illegal activity before it is too late. Over the past decade, governmental enforcement activity has uncovered systemic compliance failures at colleges and universities across the country....