Stronger enforcement for compliance
2016 has been another year of fines for a number of organisations who have not complied with a whole range of legislation, both in the UK and the US. The US seem to have been a little harder on companies and have seen a large increase in the amount of fines generated. Europe may have had other priorities but 2017 could be the year that this changes. We expect to see continued enforcement and the threat of large fines in 2017, meaning that those in compliance jobs will be under added pressure.
Employees are hard to find
The increase in the amount of compliance jobs in the past couple of years, has meant that demand outstrips supply in some sectors. Many jobs require in-depth knowledge of particular legislation or sector and there are few candidates available. This has pushed up salaries and meant that the time to hire has been slow. We expect to see this continue or even worsen in 2017, with the obvious increase in contract jobs that this will lead to.
Compliance takes a security focus with GDPR
The biggest threat to compliance for a business comes from the GDPR and reports suggest that businesses are under prepared for the legislation, that comes into force in 2018. Fines from the GDPR are up to 4% of global turnover and would see the 2016 fines pale into insignificance. One of the outcomes of our breakfast seminar on Brexit, suggested that GDPR could be used to generate revenue between member states. The UK could be a real target for this activity and UK companies need to ramp up their compliance here. We predict a large number of compliance jobs for this.
Compliance with audit changes becomes important
The biggest shake-up to the audit market came in 2016 with companies now forced to change provider every 20 years. KPMG have emerged as an early winner from this. Many companies have put this out to tender in advance of the changes and they may have been smart to do so. EY and Grant Thornton both received fines in the US from the SEC for violating independence rules there. We could see something similar happen across Europe in the next few years.
How did our predictions fair in 2016?
Regionalisation of compliance and fraud jobs – Regionalisation of these jobs has definitely started. During 2016 BeecherMadden has recruited compliance jobs in most regions of England.
AML jobs increase – We said that candidates with investigation skills from the police or military would be in demand as fraud and cyber merge closer. This did happen in 2016 and will likely continue into 2017. Public sector candidates with some cyber understanding, are in huge demand.
View the article on the BeecherMadden website.