Cost of corporate compliance to increase

The cost of corporate compliance is expected to increase this year in a tougher regulatory environment, a new survey has shown.

Complinet, a provider of connected compliance information and technology solutions to the financial services industry, published its annual cost of compliance survey for 2009, which reveals firms are anticipating significant increase in regulatory developments with accompanying costs to cope with the surge of changes.

Of the 280 global compliance professionals that responded to the survey, 66 per cent expected that, largely as a result of recent market failures, there will be a significant increase in the amount of time they will have to spend liaising and communicating with regulators and exchanges in 2009.

The survey also reveals the need to increase the amount of time that compliance professionals will have to spend on monitoring compliance and regulatory developments from regulators and exchanges.

With less resource available to manage greater regulatory pressure, the results demonstrate a need for a fully integrated, complete solution to aid compliance professionals. The explosion of disconnected information on multiple sites requires a lot of manual effort to pull together and understand the significance. This takes time that firms in the current climate cannot afford, Complinet said.

The survey also indicates that given ongoing market conditions global compliance professionals will be required to implement more stringent controls as cost-consciously as possible. The expected increase in time and cost can be managed by using a single, connected source, the survey said.

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