Stringent government regulations required for companies has led to an increase in the need for compliance professionals. With so many changing laws and regulations at hand, what does a compliance manager focus on the day-to-day?
What is Compliance Management?
Every company must comply with legal guidelines and applicable laws. This is not always easy and therefore often requires an expert to oversee, classify, audit and ensure that processes within a company do not violate official regulations.
Compliance management as a process ensures compliance with a given set of rules. The rules are referred to as the compliance standard or compliance benchmark, while the process of managing these rules is their compliance.
Compliance management can take many forms. It can be a mix of rules, regulations, procedures, policies, documentation, practices, auditing, security controls, and technological enforcement. These practices can be set in a variety of industries and regions.
Compliance is an ongoing initiative that responds to the changing regulatory environment, business growth, geographical reach, or newly enacted laws. Compliance management often involves mandates that are either federal and government-imposed standards or internal corporate standards.
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What does a Compliance Manager do?
A compliance manager is a professional in charge of maintaining a company’s legal and ethical compliance. Their main responsibility is to ensure that company policy is being followed by all members of staff and that the company reflects the corporate message and policy.
Compliance managers perform a supervisory function in the company and develop structures within the organization, which ensures that each individual employee complies with the applicable policy and can comply with legal requirements. For this purpose, they ensure the flow of information within the company.
They use compliance management systems for their work. There is no typical industry for compliance officers. Since every company must comply with legal requirements and guidelines, it can theoretically work in all industries. However, not every company has its own Compliance Officer.
What are the duties of a Compliance Officer?
- Compliance with legal requirements and guidelines
- Information flow within the company
- Documentation and control of target achievement
- Supervise and manage control systems
- Create and update strategy to abide by legal rules and internal policy
- Evaluate controls efficiency and identify risks
- Design, improve and implement productive and efficient company policies
- Collaborate and maintain continuous communication with the HR department
Skills
Broad and deep knowledge in the fields of administration and business administration, but above all in the field of law, are important elements. In addition, compliance officers have know-how in the areas of personnel and corporate management. Important soft skills are a high sense of responsibility, a highly independent way of working, the ability to work under pressure, assertiveness and organizational ability.
What must a Compliance Officer be able to do?
- Knowledge of industry regulations.
- Understanding of reporting operations and procedures
- Business and IT Knowledge
- Knowledge about vulnerability/security
- Critical thinking and Problem solving
- Assessing and Interpreting risks
- Business management know-how
- Sense of responsibility
Background
As a rule, Compliance Officers are graduates of law, but there are also courses of study that explicitly run under the name Compliance and specifically prepare students for their profession. An academic degree is therefore mandatory, and there is no training occupation.
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Salary
The starting salary for a compliance officer is approximately $50,000 gross per year. The average salary is around $77,000 gross per year. The senior salary is $117,000, but maybe significantly higher in certain cases. In individual cases, the actual income is dependent on factors such as the sector and the company, but also on work experience.
How much does a Compliance Officer earn?
| Junior | $50,000 |
| Average | $77,000 |
| Senior | $117,000 |
| Average rate Compliance Officers (2022) | $111/hr |
On average, freelance Compliance Officers charge $111/hour (freelancermap’s price and rate index in September 2022).
Freelance rates in Compliance Management range between $98 and $134 for the majority of freelancers.
If we consider an 8-hour working day at $111/hour, the daily rate for freelance Compliance Officers is around $888/day.
