The Lowdown on Control Room Compliance
With all the recent information breaches and financial crashes of the past few years, financial institutions and information technology companies are focusing closely on compliance.
As one of the fastest-growing fields in these industries, there is currently a shortage of professionals with all the requisite skills to be effective control room compliance officers, often called an “immature” field.
Definition
Control Room Compliance is the function of a company to report to executive boards, regulators, and research departments about the legality of varying processes and products. The control room compliance officer is a person who heads this department, and acts as a liaison between the above departments and bodies to ensure the company is working in a legally compliant manner.
In many ways, control room compliance is a crucial factor in the releasing of new products, financial and otherwise. Requiring a wide-ranging knowledge of what can be legally sold—especially in terms of financial products—the control room compliance officer holds a large amount of influence over what products become part of the market.
As their role is generally regulatory, state and federal regulators will often work with control room compliance officers to obtain important information about the workings of a company and its products.
Candidate Pool
As stated above, compliance control is a growing and evolving field. Given recent events such as the financial crash of 2008 and more, companies from a plethora of industries are creating and changing their compliance departments.
With a shortage of candidates who possess compliance experience, prospects are being pulled from many different components of companies. In general, candidates who have extensive technical experience, and who have a reputation of integrity, are being pulled into or hired for compliance departments.
Candidates for control room compliance officer positions largely are coming from other managerial roles, as this position is generally higher up in compliance departments. Records management, personnel management, and public relations are all part of a long list of skills needed for a control room compliance officer.
Future Prospects
As compliance becomes a growing concern for many industries, the need for compliance officers will only grow. Personal information is becoming an ever-increasing part of the technical architecture of processes within a company, which means that robust security and protection measures must be vetted by compliance officers.
Evolving trends in global finance also mean compliance officers will need to become more intimately familiar with the regulations not only of their own state or federal jurisdiction, but that of other countries across the globe. The markets of larger companies are more increasingly spanning continents, which means that language skills will also become a crucial premium in candidates for control room compliance officer positions.
An increased need for executive experience is also on the horizon for compliance departments. One of the most important functions of control room compliance officers is answering and generating reports for many branches of a company, including executives and other high-level employees.
If you are someone considering a position in control room compliance, expect to answer to the chief executive officer and his or her team on a regular basis. The CEO is often the one who presents problems and solutions to boards of directors, and a reliable compliance officer will only help in their mission to keep a company on the right side of the law.