Innovation In Compliance With Tom Fox

Kris Reynolds is the CEO of Arrowhead Consulting, a company that guides other organizations on managing their employees, processes, and tools. Tom Fox welcomes him to this week’s show to talk about corporate culture, strategies for post-pandemic productivity, and the future of project management.  Culture As a Focus Corporate culture is important and must be aligned with the business's core values. Your core values also can't be simple slogans that you have up on walls. They have to be constantly acted on. "If you're not really living and breathing the core values, you're not really going to be a culture fit," Kris tells Tom.  Post-Pandemic Strategies Kris itemizes three strategies companies should be engaging within the post-pandemic business world: creativity, relationships and connections, and going back to basics. Creativity in advertising and marketing is key, and Kris also suggests pairing creativity with relationships. "I would encourage companies whether you're small or large, to take the time to do

Andy Rudin is the Managing Principal of Contrary Domino, a management consulting company that improves financial performance by optimizing internal operations. Tom Fox welcomes him to this week’s show to talk about revenue risk management and revenue governance, and what they mean for the sales officers within organizations.   Contrary Domino Risk management is not often factored in the sales and marketing funnels of organizations. Andy founded Contrary Domino to answer this need. The percentage and likelihood of revenue opportunities closing or coming to fruition aren't often thought of as risk management problems. "I saw that opportunity and wanted to bring more process rigor to that, more mathematical rigor and bring the risk management principles into the realm of revenue generation," he tells Tom. Contrary Domino's client base is mainly information technology firms with sales forces of ten or more. "Helping organizations establish that culture and then establish processes and mechanisms to prevent ethic

Evgeny Likhoded is the founder and CEO of ClauseMatch, a company that provides financial institutions with a modern AI-based compliance platform to transform their regulatory change management process. Tom Fox welcomes him to this week’s show to talk about ClauseMatch, how it helps its clients, and the evolution of compliance.   Digital Transformation: The Core of ClauseMatch Bringing digital transformation to governance risk and compliance is at the core of the ClauseMatch platform. What ClauseMatch has built is a way for companies to collaborate in real-time on content, specifically content that needs strict and strong governance processes. "Primarily our platform is used for managing policies and procedures in a way that enables companies to track every single change every time the policy changes," Evgeny tells Tom. Ultimately it helps clients show their regulators that they have interpreted and incorporated the rules into their own internal governance frameworks, and have communicated that to their emplo

Mac Bartine is the CEO of SmartRIA, a market-leading compliance software platform. Tom Fox welcomes him to this week’s show to talk about his company's services and contributions to the compliance sector, what SmartRIA offers clients in terms of cybersecurity, and the future of technology solutions.   The Minimum Viable Product The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the first part of the startup process for platforms. It is recognizing the problems within your platforms and also believing that you can solve them. Mac explains to Tom that the problem SmartRIA solution identified in terms of the MVP is the compliance obligations. So many individuals are not experienced in managing compliance in their given industries, and so need a source of structure that understands where they are. SmartRIA offers them that, as well as the tools and frameworks needed.  Vendor Due Diligence & Data Governance Vendor due diligence and vendor management are key to managing cybersecurity risk. "You have to understand who you're wor

Dan Zitting, previously Chief Product Officer, now holds the title of CEO at Galvanize, a software company that helps its clients achieve their goals and objectives. He is also now the Chief Product Officer of Diligence. Tom Fox welcomes him back to this week’s show to take a look back at the GRC professional's role in corporate ESG and risk management.  GRC On The Frontline A company's defenses have to be in the remit of their GRC professional, not left up to the CSO. Dan remarks that while there is engagement by GRC professionals in minimizing company cyber risk, more needs to be done. GRC professionals have to ask themselves if they are managing cyber risk in ways that are helpful to the company's CSOs, by providing tools and resources to support them. "There's still work to be done in making sure that everything we're doing from a policy, controls, and compliance standpoint is actually adding value for the CSO and helping them deploy their programs, as opposed to just feeling like they're being checked o

In this episode of Taxman, Tom Fox and Tracy Howell conclude the special series by discussing a topic that has yet to be explored by most: tax and ESG.  How Tax and ESG Intersect Tracy tells Tom, “There are external forces pulling tax into the ‘S’ and ‘G’ of ESG.” In the social sector, different jurisdictions have different tax rates and laws, and as companies begin to operate in a tax-efficient manner, their activities will gravitate towards lower tax regimes. Tracy adds, “You’ve got forces trying to push the concept of ‘fair share’ rather than compliance with tax laws of different jurisdictions.” Governance-wise, it’s becoming more common for companies to be required to talk about their compliance tax audits.  The Role of Tax in a Company With the growing pressures on ESG transparency, there’s a push to standardize reporting and scorecarding of companies based on their tax transparency. This would include things like the reporting of an organization’s effective tax rate.  Tax and ESG in Multinational Org

As the Taxman five-part series nears the end, Tom Fox and Tracy Howell tackle an important topic that has become more prominent over the years: tax and supply chain.  How Tax Can Help Supply Chain Supply chain in a traditional sense focuses on the acquisition of goods, in particular the quality, cost, and delivery. There can be a substantial tax component in each of those steps to help companies attain goods at the lowest possible cost. Consequently, if supply chain does not have a relationship with tax, it can result in additional surprise costs being attached to goods. Data beyond the cost of goods, material, and service can be used to model and predict the additional tax burden so that better procurement decisions can be made.  Mitigating the Risk of Mission Creep  Establishing a connection between tax and supply chain in an organization is good, but the relationship needs to be kept fresh for a positive impact. In a company, people may be focused on so many different things that they forget to interact.

In episode 3 of the Taxman series, Tom Fox and Tracy Howell strive to answer the question: 'Why should tax have a seat at the table?’ Tax and the Table The table refers to the front end of when an organization is trying to define what it wants to do, where it wants to do it, and how it’s going to perform. A corporation’s ultimate objective is to generate net income or distributable profit, something tax professionals are well-suited to assist with because they are experts in damage control and risk mitigation. Tracy points out, “Tax can provide an umbrella to achieve corporate objectives if they’re involved in the front end.” Tax’s Relationship with Other Stakeholders  In a company, a functional lead will often pose the question: ‘Why do we need tax here?’ According to Tracy, “A good tax guy has to be proactive and provide examples to get the tax men at the table.” Educating Corporate Functions Outside of Tax  Tracy’s advice is to build a relationship with the functional experts, and “create the situation

Tom Fox and Tracy Howell continue their exploration of the intersection between compliance and tax in episode 2, where they touch on the practice of transfer pricing.  The Concept of Transfer Pricing Transfer pricing encompasses the methodologies required by tax code to price transactions between affiliated companies. Devising an arm's length rate for comparable transactions between comparable entities is more art than science. As far as compliance is involved, Tracy believes that, “If you’re a compliance officer that can say anything more than just the words, ‘transfer pricing,’ then you are, indeed, an FOT (friend of tax).”  Parties Involved in Transfer Pricing Governments (taxing jurisdictions) tend to be involved with different regimes for selling and buying. Third party organizations that are involved currently only consist of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), who push standard transfer pricing laws and regulations throughout the world.   The objective of the governments

Tom Fox is back again for a special new five-part series called Taxman. Tracy Howell, Tom’s colleague and tax expert extraordinaire, joins in to discuss the intersection between compliance and tax.  Why Should Compliance and Tax Interact?  All organizations have an enterprise risk management (ERM) system. One risk common to multinational companies especially is corporate tax risk; and yet, it tends to remain under the radar. While tax professionals are usually very good at identifying and mitigating tax risk, if there is no close interaction between compliance and tax professionals, the risks are elevated.  Sophistication in Taxing Jurisdictions  Most jurisdictions have a tax code, but street rules tend to also be in play. “You have to establish very early on that you don’t pay bribes,” Tracy advises. The results of following the law are more expensive, but it pales in comparison to the cost of putting your company at risk.  Resources Tom Fox’s Email Tracy Howell | Email | LinkedIn

Tom Fox welcomes Brad Hibbert on this episode of the Innovation in Compliance Podcast. Brad is the Chief Strategy Officer of Prevalent, Inc. He joins Tom to talk about how Prevalent helps companies manage third-party risk, the importance of risk management, and what the future for risk management in the compliance world may look like.  Managing Third-Party Risk Tom asks Brad to explain how Prevalent helps companies manage third-party risks. "We have a SaaS platform that helps organizations identify those risks, report against those risks, and then provide remediation capabilities to reduce those risks at every stage of the vendor lifecycle," Brad tells Tom. Risk management is no longer about just doing reactive reporting on an annual basis. Risk has to be proactively monitored, identified, and reduced on a day-to-day basis, and especially when companies are having day-to-day conversations with their third parties during contract execution. Prevalent enables its risk management platform by having different te

Tom Fox welcomes Yusuf Moolla on this episode of the Innovation in Compliance Podcast. Yusuf is a Director at Risk Insights, co-cost of The Assurance Show Podcast, and co-author of The Data Confident Internal Auditor. He joins Tom to talk about how compliance professionals can utilize data analytics, data governance, and internal auditing. Best Approaches To Data The easiest way to approach data, Yusuf suggests, is to think about it as another form of evidence. "Over the years we've collected lots of manual documents as evidence…Data is just another piece of evidence," he tells Tom. Data can be used by anybody, and it is very simple to do so. Currently, there has been an emergence of open source tools to process data which has made it easier and cheaper for individuals. These open-source tools have made it safer as well, as there are options to look into the source code for digital traps. Visualization is another approach to data that individuals can utilize. While relatively new, being able to visualize tec

Tom Fox welcomes Alison Taylor on this episode of the Innovation in Compliance Podcast. Alison is the Executive Director of Ethical Systems, a collaboration between leading academics in behavioral science, systems thinking, and organizational psychology. She joins Tom to talk about ethics and how it relates to ESG, stakeholders, corporate culture, as well as what place Gen Z and Millennials have in this discussion surrounding ethics and compliance in the future. Ethics & ESG The roots of ESG are ethical in themselves. Alison explains to Tom that the basis of ESG is that businesses ought to do good, and do no harm. "ESG really tries to deal with everything that's beyond compliance...that companies should not just not break the law, but they should do stuff about climate change and human rights and that kind of thing," she adds. ESG has a say about what businesses should and shouldn't be doing in society. The problem in recent times is that ESG is more so related to the profit side of business and not what sta

Tom Fox welcomes Dr. Mark Woodhull on this episode of the Innovation in Compliance Podcast. Mark is the Director of Graduate Business Education at Schreiber University, and a Military Science Academic Program Manager. He joins Tom to talk about the MBA program at Schreiner, what gain it brings to students, and what impact it will have on the business world in years to come. Schreiner MBA: Why It's Important and Who It's For Schreiner's MBA program was constructed based on feedback from regional businesses about undergraduates' lack of training in ethics. Ethics have an enormous impact on a company and determine whether they thrive or collapse. "So, we felt that we would surround our program with that particular theme," Mark tells Tom. He adds that the kind of MBA program Schreiner runs is to create all-round individuals so that they can be competent in various fields no matter what workplace they enter. "What we're trying to do is create people who are flexible, versatile and are able to work within organiza

Tom Fox welcomes Joshua Nunziato on this episode of the Innovation in Compliance Podcast. Joshua is an author, and an Instructor in the Social Responsibility and Sustainability division of the Leeds School of Business. He joins Tom to talk about corporate leaders conducting ethical leadership, its role in ESG, and why ethical leadership is a must in the future business world. Creating Ethical Leadership Joshua created his Ethical Leadership course for corporate leaders to equip them with the tools and insight they need to understand the changes happening around them. "We really want to help leaders who participate in our program to understand that acceleration is really the new constant," he tells Tom. Corporate leaders need to be able to respond proactively to changes and crises. The range of stakeholders has expanded, so the traditional approach to corporate director education is no longer going to work. Directors and corporate leaders need forward-looking tools to navigate their current environment.  The

Tom Fox welcomes back Vera Cherepanova on this episode of the Innovation in Compliance Podcast. Vera is an ethics advocate, consultant, author and speaker. She joins Tom to talk about behavioral risks, the steps behavioral scientists take to analyze risk, and strategies from financial institutions that other industries can use. Behavioral Risk in The Banking Sector Behavioral risk is more or less the same across every industry. What is specific to the financial industry however, and banking in particular, is that the individuals work with money. This creates higher risk as the outcomes can be more immediately seen and felt by the customers.  The Regulator's Role "The regulator has a very limited role in mandating culture because no regulator can mandate what kind of a culture and organization needs to have," Vera begins. The compliance regulator can mandate what the culture is, but how that corporate culture is going to be in reality will not be up to them. Speaking specifically of the UK and the Netherland

Robert Ingalls is Tom Fox’s guest on this episode of the Innovation in Compliance Podcast. He is the Chief Product Strategist at Law Pods, a podcast for busy attorneys. In this episode, Robert and Tom talk about the power of podcasting as a medium for professionals in legal fields, why it works, and what’s in store for the future of podcasting in the legal industry. What Makes Podcasting Work Consumer behavior is shifting, and so are people’s learning styles. Nowadays people want to be entertained whilst receiving information; podcasts are a great medium for this, especially for legal professionals who wish to pass on legal expertise to a wider audience. “When you make a podcast you're asking them to press play and keep living their life,” Robert tells Tom. Audio allows people to consume content in a way that is most convenient and accessible to them. Making The Leap Lawyers have had the ability to produce audio content for many years. Tom asks Robert why this was never utilized until recently. “Because the

Robert Cruz is the Vice President of Information Governance at Smarsh and is Tom Fox’s guest on this episode of the Innovation in Compliance Podcast. Tom and Robert talk about information and data governance, communications data strategies, and how Smarsh helps its customers mitigate risks through its platforms.   New Communication and Risk In the hybrid work environment employees use new communication sources such as Whatsapp, Discord, and Slack to converse daily. This poses a risk that compliance professionals are now challenged to govern since each of these technologies is different. Firms have to update their systems for this purpose and this is where Smarsh comes in. "Our communications intelligence strategy and platform helps customers bring [communication data] into a central point of control, so they can not only identify the risk but also that they can leverage this information as an asset of their business," Robert tells Tom. These new communication sources are simply ways for companies to engage,

Welcome to this special podcast series, Integrity Matters sponsored by K2 Integrity. For this series, I visit with Koby Bambilia, Managing Director, and Olivia Allison, Senior Managing Director. Over the series, we look some issues and trends going forward into 2022. In this Part 2, I am joined by Koby Bambilia who looks at trends regarding AML going into 2022. Some of the highlights include: Impact has there been to-date from the  passage of the AML Act of 2020?  What has been on the mind of clients and others in the market? Has COVID and the global crises created shifted just how bad actors take advantage of the financial system?   How are you advising your clients to mitigate these risks and get ahead of the rule making as we head into 2022? Resources Koby Bambilia Profile K2 Integrity

Don MacPherson is a futurist, a history buff, and has a degree in mass communications. He is Tom Fox’s guest on this episode of the Innovation in Compliance Podcast. Tom and Don talk about talent acquisition and retention, climate change, and the future of leadership.   Nurturing The Right Talent In the 20 years that the HR profession has been in existence, the biggest lesson that Don has learned is that ensuring you have the right talent is top priority. The companies that have the right talent are the most successful. Differentiate your organization by how you relate to your employees: provide them with better tools and resources in order to maximize their talent.  Climate Change: A Great Economic Opportunity Tom asks Don to talk about the main topics holding his interest at the moment. Don says that climate change is one such topic. "I think about [climate change] from two ways: why did we get here, what benefits have we gotten out of it, and what opportunities does it present," he tells Tom. Even though