Compliance Blog

Here's a thought-provoking blog posting from the Bank 2.0 blog about how compliance and social media interact.  The author argues that compliance divisions need to learn how to say "yes" more often.

Compliance needs to understand the negative risk of increasing workload on the frontline in respect of customer service perception, and decreasing the ability of the organization to respond to social media events in real time. They need to start thinking about their function as an enabler of the core business with customers, rather than just risk mitigation. They can also be lobbying regulators to help regulators adapt and make their processes more user-friendly, while retaining security of identity and the assets of the customer.

Customer experience is being hampered by compliance heavy processes that look to reduce risk, but make the engagement unnecessarily complex. Translating the Terms and Conditions from a paper application form onto the first 7 pages of a web-based application process might seem legally sound, but is quite ridiculous from a Usability and Customer Experience perspective.

If you look through the comments to the posting, you'll see where I stand.  I fired off a semi-cranky, response at 11 p.m. last Thursday.  I'm not sure that the author truly understands that certain disclosures and practices are legal requirements.  That being said, there might be a lesson here. 

1. Do we communicate to our "customer base" why we take our positions?  Are we saying no out of a gut reaction, or out of clear legal or regulatory mandate? 
2. Do we start out by saying no, and then look for ways to support that decision?  A better way of approaching an issue is to do the necessary research and see if there is a way for something to be done in a legal way. 

In any event, an "us versus them" mentality between compliance and marketing staff will accomplish little.  Everyone needs to be on the same page for the process to work well.