In a development that has shocked virtually nobody, compliance isn’t going anywhere. Though we’re currently a decade removed from the financial crisis and recession of the late 2000s, meaning that it would be easy to slip back into the old “that’ll do” regulatory habits, precisely the opposite has proven to be true: companies and governments are more diligent than ever in looking at laws, regulations, as well as internal audits and risk assessments designed to determine how to prevent small issues from turning into big problems.
With the governance, risk, and compliance market expected to grow from nearly EUR 25 billion in 2018 to an estimated EUR 57.3 billion in 2025, compliance isn’t necessarily cheap, but it can be a lot less painful than the costs of non-compliance. Aside from future projections, the last several years have seen a dramatic increase in overall compliance, but the biggest changes have been in financial services, the environment, and data security.
Thinking of the high-profile collapses which eventually led to the global financial crisis of 2008, it seems logical that we should begin with the sector where the problems originated: banking. Taking the initiative themselves, we have witnessed the further implementation of 2 necessary benchmarks. First and foremost is the continued implementation of the Third Basel Accord, which is designed to strengthen capital requirements by increasing liquidity and decreasing leverage by increasing minimum standards for transparency, consistency, stress testing, and risk coverage. There have also been several new data security releases from the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which handles branded card transactions.
On the environmental front, the passage of the Paris Agreement several years ago has caused an increased interest in meeting or exceeding goals of reducing waste and implementing more sustainable practices. The Council of the European Union adopted a new regulation in May to streamline reporting obligations on a number of environmental fronts, from timber and sewage regulation to the European pollutant release and transfer register. Having a further compliance impact, the European Parliament and EU Member States agreed in March 2019 to publish new disclosure requirements for sustainable investments and sustainability risks which “will detail how financial market participants and financial advisors must incorporate ESG risks and opportunities in their processes, procedures, and policies.”
While compliance issues related to environmental and financial service regulations are hardly secondary, with increasingly frequent instances of data theft becoming more costly and commonplace, the biggest issue going forward in compliance is data security. Although the landmark achievement has been the recent application of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which sets out new guidelines for data handling, storage, accessibility, and compliance requirements. Across the Atlantic, while the US doesn’t yet have a federal equivalent to the GDPR, a number of states are developing/introducing their own data protection standards and strengthening privacy laws, such as Vermont’s law regulating data brokers, California’s Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (strengthening data protection), or laws regarding data breach notification (which all states now have).
Requiring a detail-oriented approach specific to each field, compliance is vital when it comes to conducting business on a global scale, but, when dealing with multiple issues in multiple regulatory areas and multiple levels of government in multiple languages, the opportunity for costly mistakes can quickly be, well, multiplied. To best meet your needs, EVS Translations offers compliance-oriented solutions including in-house translators for quick turnaround, a team specialized in regulatory and compliance-based issues in all major areas, and operates under strict company-specific and GDPR guidelines, so your reports/information stays secure until you are ready to publish it.
