Compliance management systems are becoming a common sight in the financial sector, not just because of how well they perform, but also because of the excellent ROI on them. If your organization is worried about the costs of implementing a compliance management solution, here are 3 reasons they shouldn’t be.

Compliance related fines and damages are reduced

The most obvious and the most direct effect is on compliance-related fines. When regulatory bodies find a compliance issue and determine that the course of action taken by the non-compliant institution was unsatisfactory they can levy heavy fines. These fines end up eating into the profits of the bank. Compliance management systems help alleviate these fines in two ways. One is that they deliver better compliance, which results in fewer compliance breaches and thus a lower chance of being fined.

The second way is that these systems create an auditable trail of the course of action taken. When a regulatory body does an external audit, they need as much transparency from the organization being audited. Banks and financial institutions which have compliance management solutions in place do not even need to create reports for these audits – because each course of action taken is recorded within the system. This results in a more positive response from the regulatory body, which can result in lower fines.

Compliance costs are reduced

Managing costs of compliance is a major pain point for banks and financial institutions. Management is concerned about ballooning costs caused by increasing regulations. Compliance management technology helps by lowering compliance costs significantly. The level of vigilance made possible by compliance management technology is unparalleled in any manual method of compliance management.

The role of compliance officers and managers also changes significantly due to compliance tech. While previously they used to spend hours on administrative tasks that were menial, that time is free now, because such tasks are automated now. This allows organizations to augment the performance of compliance officers and managers. They can focus on major compliance improvement undertakings and make more of an impact.

Quicker service delivery means happier customers

Quicker compliance actions improve service delivery considerably – this is a side of compliance management that is not highlighted enough. Compliance actions add a lot of time to the services requested by the client. The bank or financial institution is bound not just by law, but also by the necessity of integrity in this business to ensure that everything happens in a compliance-friendly manner.

Compliance management solutions allow compliance officers and managers to quickly detect and respond to compliance conflicts. If the system detects an issue it will automatically notify the assigned stakeholders, who will be able to collaborate within the system quickly and effortlessly. Instead of multiple emails and calls to ensure everyone is on the same page, the system can be trusted to keep everyone on the same page.

This can be a great competitive advantage as well. Organizations that implement compliance management technology can leapfrog competition that is still handling compliance manually.

How compliance management systems became such a safe bet

Compliance management systems weren’t always this beneficial, which is why some banks are still concerned that implementing such a system may cause too much disruption or cost too much. The first few compliance management solutions were indeed overly complicated and cost a lot, but that is true for every new technology. Now we are more than a decade into the rise of compliance technology and the landscape looks very different.

Modern compliance management technology is easy to implement and does not cost a lot. There are still solutions that cost millions of dollars, but those are aimed at organizations with thousands of employees. There are many sleeker solutions for small to mid-sized organizations which deliver a better ROI. If your organization is concerned about whether a compliance management solution will be beneficial then it needs to look at free trials. Many solution providers offer commitment-free trials of up to a month – which will allow your organization to do a cost-benefit analysis without investing anything.