In-demand Risk & Compliance skills

Many organisations are facing a skills shortage. Add to this the fact that recruitment markets have tightened up significantly, and it has never been more important to ensure you are identifying the best possible skills that will help drive your teams forward.

Equally, from a professional’s perspective, upskilling and improving your knowledge of key areas within your area of expertise is a great way to improve your career prospects.

Compliance and risk have grown to be recognised as crucial components of organisational sustainability and integrity. Businesses in a variety of industries, from financial institutions to multinational conglomerates, deal with a wide range of risk and compliance issues. Skilled risk and compliance professionals are essential in protecting companies from various risks and ensuring adherence to changing regulatory requirements.

As part of our new salary guide, we identified some of the most important Compliance and Risk Management skills that employers globally look for when hiring into their teams. Here’s what we found…

Skills for Risk Management:

Risk Reporting

Understanding the various risks a company faces is important when undertaking any project or business activity. Risk reporting helps to identify any risks involved that may impact business processes, and subsequent actions can be taken to mitigate them.

Credit & Market Risk

Experience across both credit and market risk is desirable, as it allows an organisation to have a better understanding of the possibility of losses due to a default on debt (credit risk) and the possibility of losses due to movements in uncontrollable market variables (market risk).

Operational Risk

Having processes in place that monitor the day-to-day risks of occurrences that could result in disruption of business operations, and subsequently, direct or indirect financial loss, is known as operational risk. Factors such as employee error, fraudulent activity and actual events can all have an impact.

Risk Analytics

Through techniques and technologies that allow insight extrapolation, likely scenarios can be identified and future events can be predicted - this is risk analytics. With a greater awareness of risk these days, this largely accurate approach is a key aspect of an organisation’s risk management activity today.

Embedding Risk Frameworks

Overarching all angles of risk management, the ability to effectively embed risk frameworks into an organisation is crucial. An individual working in this area will set up, enhance and review a risk management framework.

Key Compliance skills:

Compliance Monitoring

Compliance monitoring aims to identify compliance risks within an organisation’s operations. It’s important as it allows them to check how well business operations meet regulatory and internal process obligations.

Compliance Advisory

Compliance advisory helps companies evaluate how effective their compliance functions are by looking deeply into procedures and policies. This is an integral part of ensuring the business is compliant and abiding to all relevant regulations.

Financial Crime Compliance

Organisations actively take steps to reduce the risk of being a victim of financial crime. Financial crime compliance allows a business to detect and evaluate any suspicious activity, and then take action to prevent it.

Data Privacy

Experience in data privacy has gathered serious momentum in recent years. With stricter data privacy laws in place, any violation can lead to reputational damage and significant fines - organisations need professionals with the skills to prevent that.

Embedding Compliance Frameworks

Embedding compliance frameworks ensures an organisation is adhering to all necessary regulations and laws relating to the region in which it operates. It underpins all areas of compliance.

AML

AML professionals are pivotal in developing and implementing policies and procedures to detect and deter money laundering activities within financial institutions and other regulated entities. They use sophisticated tools and techniques to identify suspicious transactions, conduct due diligence on customers, and report suspicious activities to relevant authorities.

Regulatory Compliance

Professionals in regulatory compliance ensure that organisations operate within the boundaries of legal and regulatory frameworks to mitigate risks and maintain integrity. They monitor regulatory developments, assess their impact on the organisation, and develop compliance programmes to ensure adherence to applicable laws and standards.

Interpersonal, soft skills

As well as the more technical Legal, Compliance and Risk Management skills and abilities outlined above, there are a few key interpersonal, soft skills to look out for.

• Stakeholder engagement
• Multi-task and ability to prioritise
• Communication skills
• System enhancement/IT skills

If you are looking to hire someone in Legal, Risk or Compliance, get in touch today.

Equally, if you are a professional in these areas and are looking for your next career move, we have a range of jobs available - you can browse them here.