​Only one in three firms measure compliance - report

About one-third of risk and insurance managers (34%) fail to measure the effectiveness of their regulatory/compliance programmes, according to a recent StrategicRISK survey on regulation risk.

Of those (and the 14% that were unsure of whether they measured success), 52.38% cited lack of knowledge in how to do so and 42.86% said they had a lack of relevant data. One risk manager also blamed a lack of management support.

Commenting on the results, Scentre Group chief risk officer Eamonn Cunningham said compliance can be difficult to measure.

“To some extent it’s almost like how do you measure the efficacy or the quality of your insurance programme when you haven’t had any claims during the year?” he said.

“You could say we haven’t been fined – that may be one measure – but in my mind it’s less about that. It’s more about the quality and the awareness of the legal department [to deploy] notions of the need for everybody in the enterprise to behave and act in a responsible, ethical and legal way at all times.”

Willis Singapore executive director Alex Thoms (pictured) added that “it very much depends on the lense through which ‘measurement’ is being viewed”.

“On the one hand, if we are talking about effectiveness in terms of actually complying with regulation then I would have expected this figure to be higher. On the other hand, if we are talking about effectiveness in terms of the impact that regulation/compliance has on a company’s day to day operations, then the figure doesn’t surprise me as I’m not sure that this aspect always falls within a risk manager’s remit,” he said.

“One area of increasing focus that we are seeing among a number of our own clients is whether their insurance programmes are compliant with insurance regulation. This is particularly the case for companies with operations overseas, where there is a need to ensure admitted/non-admitted regulations are adhered to – particularly given the effect that getting things wrong can have on securing and distributing claims payments.”