The climate change for compliance

by: Linnea Solem

I spent last week in New York City chairing the Steering Committee Q3 Meeting for The Shared Assessments Program. New York City was “buzzing” more than its normal pace by hosting the United Nations Climate Summit 2014 Catalyzing Action; holding the worlds’ largest citizens protest rally and parade for climate change; and a Presidential address to the United Nations, including a foreign policy update to the U.N. Security Council.

While traffic jams, security controls, barricades, and surveillance shifted our attention away from our own focus on third party risk management, I was struck by compliance parallels. The events offered a perfect storm of converging strategic change issues affecting our environment that are not so different than the current regulatory hurricane affecting multiple industries.

Evidence of global warming is not affecting all geographies the same way – while portions of the world experienced one of the warmest years on record; the Midwest and East Coast of the United States can still shiver in the memory of last winter’s polar vortex. However, one area that has remained hot is Washington D.C. in terms of a heated regulatory landscape.

Media events related to privacy and security continue to fan the flames of legislative debate on data breach notifications and security of data. Consumer protection oversight continues to reign supreme in financial services today – while implementation of The Dodd-Frank Act has barely eclipsed its’ halfway mark in terms of regulatory changes, the enforcement actions and rulemaking continue to be hot topics in compliance circles. Over 8,000 pages of final regulations have been issued by the CFPB.

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