By James Thomas, 7 October 2024
The gold standard for compliance today is to function effectively as a business enabler; a trusted partner helping the right business to be done in the right way.
Achieving this vision in practice can be challenging, not least because cultural, structural or technological issues – either within organisations or within compliance teams themselves – can represent an obstacle when seeking to reposition compliance or to redefine its ownership.
On the front foot
The ICA Compliance Awards Europe were established to celebrate and share best practice within the profession. With that in mind, we spoke with Janice Batty, Director of Compliance, and Holly Flindall, Compliance Data & Reporting Manager, of Ageas Insurance, the winner of the 2024 Compliance Team of the Year, Financial Services.
The award recognised the Ageas Compliance Team’s success in forging new strategic partnerships with the business, a move that was driven by a need to ensure that compliance was truly owned by the business and by a desire to be more effective and efficient in delivering compliance services to the business. Specifically, this involved empowering first line of defence, enabling the Compliance Team – which had invariably been looked at as a decision-maker in many instances – to assume the role of a strategic business partner, supporting decision making.
“We have worked in an increasingly complex regulatory environment, with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) being extremely assertive in the general insurance space over the last five or six years,” explains Janice. “We took the view that the strategic nature of compliance needed to be more at the forefront. Although you can get by with a purely transactional compliance team, ultimately this move was driven by a desire to develop into a team that is forward looking, aware of the value that they can add to support the business to provide products to customers in a way that isn’t impacted by a regulator being assertive, because it enables us to be on the front foot with regard to regulatory change.”
Mindset shift
Key to achieving this was the implementation of a RegTech solution (rules-mapping), which relevant departments across Ageas now use to gain a clearer understanding of Consumer Duty compliance, product and pricing, to name a few.
Achieving buy-in for this required not only a mindset shift across the business, but also within the Compliance Team itself, not least because the change followed a long period of stability and ways of working, and the use of technology is still relatively new in compliance departments. Communication and collaboration have been essential is securing this buy-in.
“It’s been a big shift for us and for the business to move to something that is more proactive instead of reactive,” Holly explains. “Ultimately, this approach is about helping the business to help themselves and we now have a set up in which we can clearly see the rules, senior management ownership and status on a real time basis. This means the first line moving more to a self-serve approach, utilising expertise of the Compliance Team in a different way, and this has been an evolution in terms of how the first and second line works but also in our skills."
“Nowadays, to succeed in compliance, you need the technical ability as well as the strategic mindset. It’s a tough role. If we reflect on the journey we’ve been on, we have had to take a little bit of a leap of faith. It required a lot of people, not only in Compliance, to trust the journey we’ve been on.”
“It’s important to not be afraid of change, but to take it as an opportunity,” adds Janice. “My role in this has been to coach people through that change, providing support and taking away the fear factor. We’ve had to embrace the fact that it’s OK for the business to make the decision.”
Motivation and energy
Winning an ICA Award was not only an opportunity to celebrate with peers across the industry, it’s also provided an opportunity for the team to reflect on its achievements.
“It’s not just the external recognition that’s important,” explains Holly, “it’s the internal as well. As a Compliance Team, stopping and taking a moment to congratulate ourselves was something we don’t do very often. We came back from the event very motivated and energised.”
“I felt a great deal of pride in the team for winning this award,” agrees Janice, “Because it can be easy in a busy, fast-moving environment to lose sight of what compliance is there to do.”
“The Awards provide an important opportunity for us, as compliance professionals, to self-reflect and celebrate what we do and to enjoy the moment in what is a highly complex and ever-changing landscape.”
Entries are now open for the ICA Compliance Awards 2025 Europe. If you are interested, you can find more information below.