Standard Chartered’s Regional Compliance Head shares insights

Standard Chartered’s Regional Head, Compliance, India and South Asia, Ravi Duvvuru made a presentation to compliance officers from banks in Sri Lanka recently. The session focused on the importance of building a compliance culture in financial institutions.  Duvvuru also drew on his experience of a number of years with Reserve Bank of India, to apprise the audience of regulatory expectations and the supervisory approaches in other jurisdictions.

Standard Chartered Regional Head, Compliance, India and South Asia Ravi Duvvuru

Duvvuru speaking at the session said: “The role of compliance has become increasingly proactive in the current regulatory and external environment, and with an increasing pace of regulatory change. Prudential regulations like Basel III, governance and internal controls must be diligently adhered to, and the critical role of compliance during times of stress must be given particular attention. The current environment is that of heightened supervision where most regulators are moving towards ‘risk based supervision,’ pricing transparency, outsourcing, customer due diligence and thematic reviews.”

The session covered key risk areas – Anti Money Laundering, Treating Customers Fairly, Customer Data Privacy and Cross Border issues – and emphasised the need to embed discipline in sales through product disclosure, fact finding and risk profiling of the customer.

Duvvuru also highlighted in the session that there must be a continued focus on addressing the root cause of complaints as opposed to pure incident management. Discussions were also held on implications of FATCA for domestic banks. The session concluded with the reiteration that Compliance Departments must act using prudent judgment and position themselves as independent guardians of the financial institution, with a vision of building a world class compliance culture within the organisation. The session was organised by the Training and Development sub-committee of the Association of Compliance Officers of Banks – Sri Lanka (ACOB). More than 30 senior compliance officers from banks in the country participated.