Independent market study highlights an opportunity for financial services firms to establish a culture of individual accountability with employee compliance software.

ROCKVILLE, Md., Feb. 7, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- StarCompliance ("Star"), a leading SaaS provider of employee compliance technology solutions, has extended its Individual Accountability Regime (IAR) solution to include Australia's new Financial Accountability Regime (FAR). This will allow financial services firms regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) to comply more easily with the regulation, and establish a strong, firm-wide culture of individual accountability.  

FAR is designed to improve the risk and governance cultures of Australia's financial institutions and is an extension of the current Banking Executive Accountability Regime (BEAR) introduced in 2018. A strong, firm-wide culture of responsibility and ethical behavior in financial institutions starts with the individual accountability of its senior executives, and over the past five years, there has been a 300% increase in the number of individual accountability regimes enacted globally.

Today's announcement follows the results of an independent market survey of financial services compliance professionals in Australia, commissioned by Star in Q3 2023, to provide deeper insights into the country's employee compliance landscape and the readiness of Australian firms for FAR.

The survey revealed that:

• 61% of respondents cover four or more areas of compliance
• 43% still rely on manual compliance processes
• 57% lack process automation of any kind
• 49% struggle to build compliance infrastructure to comply with new regulations
• 82% are aware of the regulation but only 39% know about the specific details

To ensure full compliance with FAR, firms need clarity on the requirements; the ability to stay up to date as the regulation changes; streamlined, automated and easy-to-implement business processes; and certainty of comprehensive and proactive governance and insight. Less than half of the firms surveyed (43%) are confident that the processes they currently have in place for BEAR will allow them to comply with FAR.

"Just as compliance professionals in jurisdictions globally are often stretched and face pressures on multiple fronts, those in Australia are dealing with a range of challenges," said Jennifer Sun, CEO of StarCompliance. "With Star's Accountability & Competency solution, firms are not only able to streamline compliance with the new Financial Accountability Regime – they can also drive enterprise-wide professionalism to help foster a culture of compliance that bolsters the firm's reputation."

"Successful compliance with Australia's FAR regime will rely on understanding the complexity of the regulation in the context of the entire business and aligning it to accountability across the firm's accountable persons," said Craig Jones, Chief Revenue Officer at StarCompliance. "Star was the first vendor to provide a suite of software solutions that support and simplify compliance for multiple individual accountability regimes globally. The depth and breadth of our Accountability & Competency offering is second to none and has been combined with outstanding knowledge from our subject matter experts, who are dedicated to helping firms understand their obligations to global accountability regimes."

Star has more than 20 years' experience in building configurable compliance technology, supporting a global client base across a broad range of industry sectors, including financial services. The full results and in-depth analysis of Star's Australia market study were published and made available today.

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About StarCompliance

StarCompliance is the world's leading provider of employee compliance technology solutions. Trusted globally by forward-thinking companies in 114 countries, Star's future-ready compliance platform delivers on-demand configurability, multi-jurisdictional integrity, and the actionable intelligence you need to monitor for conflicts, meet regulatory obligations, and reduce risk. Compliance no longer needs to be complex. Check out Star's intuitive, straightforward UX and give your employees the multi-layered protection they need to comply with confidence. www.starcompliance.com

Source: StarCompliance