How to Build a Holistic Entity Compliance Management Program in 2024
Due to the rapidly changing and convoluted business environment, adopting a corporate compliance program has become necessary for companies in essence to avoid rolling the dice.
According to Statista, 41% of the risks encountered by leading companies included supply chain disruptions, followed by cyber incidents at 40% which is not surprising given what we have gone through the past few years. In terms of entity management, there has been ebbs and flows for changes in legislation and regulations and market developments like mergers and acquisitions. These are some reasons businesses must have regulatory compliance policies in place.
Organizations are increasingly facing regulatory challenges, operational disruptions, and risks to their reputations. Therefore, creating legal policies that encompass not only regulatory requirements, but also social and ethical responsibilities is compulsory for companies.
The goal of holistic compliance is to build a culture of ethical behavior that includes everyone, from stakeholders to employees, customers, and suppliers. Explore the key elements of ducking your proverbial head by creating a compliance program with all of its benefits for enterprises just below.
What Is a Corporate Compliance Program?
A corporate compliance program is a set of policies, controls, and procedures ensuring an organization operates responsibly and within legal and ethical limits.
The purpose of this program is to identify and resolve potential violations of laws in the organization’s regulations and internal policies.
Importance of a Corporate Compliance Program
In today’s business landscape, a company’s prestige is its most valuable asset. While rules for business practices are becoming onerous, violations can lead to severe financial and reputational consequences for an enterprise.
According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s 2018 Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State, the annual regulatory costs in the U.S. in 2017 were estimated to be almost $1.9 trillion.
Federal Regulations in Entity Management Compliance
The big daddy here is the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA). This is a U.S. federal law that was passed in 2021 with the aim of increasing transparency around the ownership and control of U.S. companies. The law requires certain companies to report information about their beneficial owners (i.e., the individuals who ultimately own or control the company) to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which is a bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department There are federal regulations that govern entity management.
The CTA applies to certain corporations, limited liability companies, and other similar entities that are formed or registered to do business in the U.S. Specifically, it applies to companies that are defined as "reporting companies," which are companies that are not already subject to certain types of federal oversight, such as publicly traded companies or financial institutions.
From an entity management perspective, the CTA will likely have an impact on the way that certain companies are managed and organized. In particular, companies that are subject to the CTA will need to ensure that they have accurate and up-to-date information about their beneficial owners, and that this information is reported to FinCEN in a timely manner.
This may require companies to implement new processes and procedures for collecting and verifying beneficial ownership information, and for ensuring that this information is maintained and updated on an ongoing basis. In addition, companies may need to review their existing governance structures and make changes to ensure that they are in compliance with the CTA's reporting requirements.
Overall, the CTA represents a significant shift towards greater transparency in corporate ownership and control, and companies that are subject to the law will need to adapt their entity management practices accordingly.
In addition, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has regulatory authority over certain types of entities, similar to CTA that includes publicly traded companies, investment funds, and investment advisors.
The SEC requires publicly traded companies to file regular reports that disclose information about their financial performance, operations, and other matters that could affect investors' decisions. By the same token, investment advisors are subject to registration and reporting requirements under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Labor (DOL), also have regulations that may impact entity management. As an example, the IRS has rules regarding tax filings and reporting requirements for certain types of entities, while the DOL has regulations related to employee benefit plans and fiduciary responsibilities.
In general, poor compliance policies can erode the trust of stakeholders and result in investor withdrawal, supply chain disruptions, reduced employee productivity, and lost business opportunities.
But proper compliance program oversight minimizes legal risks and sustains a company’s reputation by ensuring it meets its regulatory obligations. They can also help avoid costly penalties and identify and manage data privacy fraud and corruption risks.
Moreover, a compliance program improves engagement among employees so they can understand and act in accordance with their company’s rules.
Ultimately, a corporate compliance program can assist an organization in defining its risk tolerance in pursuit of its objectives. This isn’t a ‘put your finger up in the air to see which way the wind is blowing’. It's a concerted effort to assess whether your organization is more conservative and risk adverse or flexible in pursuing its objectives, each should focus on implementing policies and procedures that reflect this which will allow everyone involved to operate accordingly.
7 Elements of an Effective Corporate Compliance Program
If you invest in building robust compliance programs, it will guarantee the long-term success of your business. The value here is we are hoping this outline takes the bite out of getting started.
For the policies to be fruitful, you must follow the U.S. Sentencing Commission Guidelines. Its eighth chapter, amended in 2004, describes the seven elements of an effective compliance program. Grab some coffee, it’s a challenging read or take a glance at the highlights here which include:
The first element relates to the establishment of written policies and procedures. These policies should establish the legal and ethical standards to which all employees must adhere, identify compliance risks, and the consequences of non-compliance.
Establish a compliance committee and assign someone who is in charge of overseeing the implementation of the compliance program and resolving significant compliance risk. High-level executives, the board of directors, and senior personnel must govern the compliance policies. They should be responsible for maintaining and enforcing the program across the organization, as well as establishing a compliance officer.
Your company must provide education and regular training to employees. This training will make them aware of your organization’s expectations and requirements to comply with regulations and enable them to understand the severity of compliance.
Implement a compliance training program, including an annual session and revisions that clearly remind your employees of your business’s ethical code of conduct.
Establish an internal and external monitoring system and conduct regular audits. Assess areas of weakness and identify potential non-compliance risks in your organization.
Your organization must deploy an internal mechanism for investigating regulatory violations. Employees should be able to report compliance concerns and fraudulent activities anonymously. Establish two-way communication that can help analyze the issues and take timely, appropriate action.
Internal Enforcement and Discipline
You must have a strategy in place to enforce employee disciplinary measures promptly. The standards must clearly define the consequences of violating regulatory policies.
The seventh element of corporate compliance programs is response and prevention. Your organization must continuously evaluate and improve compliance based on your employees' responses, stakeholders' experiences, and changes in regulations.
Besides, depending on these experiences and changes, you’ll be able to discover violations and take consistent measures to prevent them.
How To Create a Corporate Compliance Program
Creating a successful compliance program for your business requires you to take a systematic approach that involves following several steps. Here’s how you can build effective regulatory policies for your business:
Involve All Necessary Parties A.K.A Posterior Protection
Digging into this, the first step to building an effective regulatory plan is to involve all necessary parties, including senior management and employees. Your board must be on one page regarding the program and should support staffing, resources, and the budget needed to build regulatory policies.
It’s easier for the employees to follow the plan with the help of leadership support. Next, create a compliance team that includes representatives from your legal, HR, finance, and operations departments. This team should be responsible for developing, implementing, monitoring, and maintaining compliance policies across the organization.
It should also take input from all involved parties to identify potential risks, write policies to address them, and outline directives that employees are expected to follow. Moreover, the compliance team should seek feedback from all parties to ensure the regulatory program meets their needs.
Moreover, including everyone in your organization in the compliance plan ensures they understand their role and responsibilities regarding maintaining it.
Assess Current Risk and Increase Transparency
This is a biggie. Assessing current risks and increasing transparency are crucial components of creating an effective compliance procedure. Transparent assessment guarantees a company is adhering to existing laws and regulations and therefore mitigating risks like penalties, reputational damage, and other negative consequences.
Start by determining the regulatory requirements that apply to your organization. These requirements may include industry standards or regulations that affect your company’s operations.
Your compliance team should be able to assess your company’s current legal status by reviewing policies, training materials, and procedures. This is necessary to ensure your business is meeting all regulatory requirements. Make sure that there are processes in place that allow full visibility on all compliance aspects.
In addition, the team should conduct a risk analysis. This includes assessing your organization’s operations, supply chains, customer interactions, and partnerships to identify non-compliance issues.
Based on the potential risks, the compliance team should be able to develop strategies like internal monitoring and training programs. A periodic risk assessment can also help establish procedures to determine new compliance risks and visibility issues and mitigate them on time.
Establish Guidance Across Departments
Establishing guidance across departments can help you identify areas of non-compliance you may miss if only one department is involved. This also means all the stakeholders in your organization are held to the same regulatory standards - more CYA.
Your compliance team should be able to review past incidents and consult with departmental managers and stakeholders to recognize potential risks each department faces.
Next, they should develop standards and controls tailored to each department’s specific needs and align them with the overall compliance objective of your company. Your team should also establish cross-functional communication so each department can communicate with the other regarding compliance concerns. Maybe in your intranet or via a slack channel.
Communication can include regular meetings, collaboration on compliance initiatives, and reporting channels like a hotline or email address.
Furthermore, your compliance team should assign clear responsibilities to each department and establish accountability at appropriate levels so employees can report without fear of reprisal. Also, the team should regularly review or establish a cadence to update legal controls based on changes in regulatory environments.
Launching new guidelines is a critical aspect of a business compliance plan. It ensures that all regulatory updates are communicated, accepted, and adopted by the stakeholders. Your compliance team must develop the new guidelines by consulting with subject matter experts and reviewing existing legal procedures.
Once the new policies are developed, they should be disseminated to all stakeholders via mail, your company’s website, or through meetings and training. Make everyone aware of the new requirements.
Your team should also incorporate feedback from all senior management, department heads, and front-line employers to adjust the new guidelines accordingly.
Continuously Monitor and Adjust
Last but not least, it is equally vital to monitor and adjust your compliance program continuously. Your compliance team should set up a monitoring plan that identifies key performance indicators (KPIs) to track incident reporting and training completion rates and audit results.
The data collected from the monitoring plan should be used to recognize key compliance trends and areas of improvement. Continuously reviewing your legal policies will also help your company to remain relevant to regulatory requirements.
Additionally, your legal compliance team should use the data analysis to make informed decisions like modifying policies and procedures and providing additional training to employees.
Maintaining a Corporate Compliance Program
Maintaining a corporate compliance program can be difficult, as it includes a complex set of policies, employee training, investigation mechanisms, and reporting. Manually managing regulatory policies is impossible, especially for large enterprises, as the legal procedures require a high level of transparency.
Therefore, you’ll need compliance management software to streamline and automate your compliance program. Allied Market Research has already forecasted the global market for compliance management software to grow at a 15.7% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to reach $3.06 billion by 2027. Here’s how this tool can help you:
Provides Entity Management Reporting
We are Filejet, a leading legal entity management software, and we spearhead a comprehensive entity audit upon implementation. This helps establish current status visibility and a baseline to determine active compliance risk. Our software will help you maintain regulatory consistency and accuracy across your organization surrounding entity management. Which is often the most overlooked part of a compliance program and one that can garner a quick win for a new corporate compliance program.
Automates Legal Processes
Automating your compliance procedure can save time and minimize the risk of errors primarily because most entity management programs are organized around a spreadsheet relying on busy teams to maintain it. Filejet can help. We establish practices that automate the compliance process, keeping entities in good standing.
Offers Real-Time Reporting
At Filejet, we have witnessed the hefty costs for non-compliance and the dread of having to write checks for fines, penalties, back taxes and legal entanglements. When an entity has become out of compliance or has been administratively dissolved due to non-compliance or illegal continued operation, the costs can be excessive. From our point of view, if your organization is paying out dollars in any measurement on entity management, that equates to a high tolerance for risk in an attempt to align with company growth goals.
Filejet provides real-time reporting on the performance of compliance measures as it relates to entity management, ensuring timely identification of potential violations. This can help save your organization from reputational damage, legal penalties and potential liabilities and lawsuits. Filejet is your get out of jail card that you can keep in your back pocket.
Enables Collaboration…Makes You Fearless
Filejet compliance management software enables collaboration between stakeholders, senior management, employees, and departments. Accountability can be managed and documented, and specific entities can be assigned to people or departments. This ensures everyone is on the same page and can work effectively for the success of regulatory policies. It also promotes crucial cross-company visibility and communication ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks.
Whether you have a small business or a large enterprise, compliance changes can be challenging to adopt. Due to the engagement with government agencies for entity management it can be daunting to keep up with federal, state and jurisdiction requirements. Filejet is comprehensive and flexible and can cost-efficiently scale to adjust to these regulatory requirements and the needs of your company.
Efficient Compliance with Filejet
A corporate compliance program is critical for the long-term success of any business as it can mitigate legal risks. While managing compliance is not easy, Filejet, a legal entity management system, can streamline your regulatory workflows and ensure transparency across all your business entities.
We aren’t handing out superhero capes but Filejet can help maintain your organization’s credibility, reduce legal inefficiencies, and notify you when your filing date is due. So, what are you waiting for? Explore Filejet today for efficient compliance and entity management.
