How tech-savvy law firms stay ahead of regulatory changes
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When government administrations change, businesses must inevitably update their compliance programs in response to potential changes in regulations. And the transition from the Trump to Biden Administration hasn’t been any different. In fact, the first two months of Biden’s term were the opposite of the last two months of former President Trump’s term. Trump’s last 60 days featured a flurry of deregulatory activity, and now Biden is seeking to undo the bulk of those efforts.
Finance services, fintech, vehicle manufacturing, transportation and oil & gas, among other highly regulated industries, have seriously been affected by these sweeping regulatory changes.
Legal firms need to keep track of global, national and regional regulators but also from other sources such as regulatory publications, industry associations, national and local media, and specialized content providers such as LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, and the list goes on and on.
With so many information sources to keep track of and the high volumes of changes to take into account in order to maintain compliance, organizations may find this exercise time-consuming and challenging to manage. Understanding the different ways to use technology is the best way to find the right risk management solution.
Using tracking software for Regulatory Intelligence
Software like Visualping is helping law firms to monitor regulatory changes by automating the process and receiving email notifications as soon as a change occurs. This technology allows users to select a page where regulations are published or an area of a webpage and tailor the tracking options, like frequency of checks and threshold on magnitude of the change to receive an email notification.
The website change detection software is used by legal professionals to receive real-time alerts of emerging compliance risks such as modifications in laws, regulations, policies but also Thomson Reuters press releases or multi-jurisdictional updates, among many other resources.
Having a Standard Regulatory Taxonomy
Global organizations often deal with inconsistencies in regulatory taxonomy across geographies. Standardizing regulatory taxonomy in line with the organizational hierarchy and consistent in terms of language, terminology, and structure is the best way to improve communication among all stakeholders. Setting up a robust compliance framework also helps organizations to categorize, store, and deliver regulatory updates.
An effective way to standardize the taxonomy using technology is to centralize a cloud-based content platform which serves as a one-stop for regulatory content from various sources for the entire organization.
Assessing the Business Impact
Once regulatory updates have been identified and shared across the company, they need to be assessed in terms of the business impact they will have on the organization. Depending on the size of the business this will be carried out by a business unit or a specialist. But in any case, this is the moment to identify which risks, controls, policies, procedures, and reports will be impacted and thus, need to be revised.
Firms using compliance technology are using machine learning software to automate business impact assessment. Machine learning processes will not only group similar regulatory updates and eliminate duplicates but also identify similar patterns and trends in the risks, controls, policies, and other areas that may have been affected.
To make this process easier, more cost effective and achievable, tech-savvy law firms are using comprehensive regulatory change management solutions. They can now detect compliance risks as soon as they arise using the right software, communicating the changes along the entire organization and effectively assess the impact in their clients´ business.
This competitive edge is not only helping them track and analyze the always changing regulatory environment, but they can also ensure that the changes are effectively implemented.
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