New technology has made avoidance of compliance breaches achievable for the first time, attendees at the Curium Risk and Compliance Summit heard.

Curium CEO and co-founder Tetiana George told attendees on Thursday a workplace culture that encourages employees to speak up if they see problems is also crucial.

“It’s about catching things early and not letting them happen – almost no one has an excuse not to do it, because it’s possible,” Ms George said.

“In the past, it wasn’t possible, but with AI technology scanning all of that, it’s possible. It’s real, it’s a choice.

“Things will always go wrong ... but the only way for you to manage it effectively is to let your people speak up and voice their concerns ... tell you, ‘This doesn't feel right.’ ”

While risk and compliance teams are commonly viewed as a “cost centre and overhead”, Ms George says this is misguided because if your “customer is protected, then you’ll have more customers”.

“If you’re doing what you say you’re going to do for a customer, they’re going to come back to you, they’re going to trust it, they’re going to place more business with you,” she said. “We’re building that relationship of trust with the customer – and also with the regulator.”  

Also presenting at the summit was AUB head of compliance Chamila Fernando, who said while complaint reporting statistics are up, he believes matters are still under-reported.  

“I think there’s a misconception in the industry in terms of what constitutes a complaint. There’s nothing called a formal complaint – any expression of dissatisfaction is a complaint,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s in writing, whether it’s verbally, whether it’s made on your Facebook channel, Instagram – as long as the person complaining is identifiable, that’s a complaint that needs to be resolved through the regulation guidelines.”

He said better education of staff will “hopefully see more complaints being reported”.  

“When I speak to the AUB network, I say I’m not advocating for more complaints, but because the bar is so low there are bound to be complaints that are not being reported. I think we need to understand there are misconceptions.”