Thinking Outside the Box: Examining the Growing Trend of Compliance Outsourcing (Part One of Two)

As anti-corruption enforcement efforts mature, governments are raising the compliance bar.  Implementing and maintaining a best-in-class compliance program that meets these ever-rising standards requires significant human resources and can overwhelm a compliance department, even at a large company.  To help ease the burden on in-house compliance personnel, many companies are outsourcing compliance activities – such as proactive monitoring, training and hotline operations – to third-party vendors.  Some have even gone so far as to hire an outside vendor to serve as their chief compliance officer.  In this two-part article series, we examine the outsourcing trend and discuss the benefits and risks of outsourcing various compliance functions.  This first article discusses the reasons a company might outsource some or all of its compliance functions and explores the associated risks and benefits.  The second article will look at how companies are outsourcing various compliance functions.  See “The Nuts and Bolts of Anti-Corruption Hotlines: An Interview with Benjamin Haley of Covington & Burling” (Sep. 24, 2014).

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