Be Thankful for Compliance
By Cailie Currin, President / CEO
Business Insurance had a short, yet important, article in the November 2020 edition titled “COVID-19 Raised Bar on Compliance Risk,” written by Claire Wilkinson. The sheer number of mandates that have come from all levels of governments across the country is likely unprecedented. This article is focused on the requirements for essential business offices to remain open and re-open, but there have been so many more when viewed through the lens of all insurance operations.
Ellen Dunkin, senior vice president, general counsel, and chief risk officer at Amalgamated Life Insurance Company, located in White Plains, NY, addresses the issue of being an essential business. She says: “We had to make sure we’d filed the right plans and were meeting all of the orders coming out of the governor’s office.” David Wald, CEO and co-founder of Aclaimant Inc., makes clear the scope of the problem, even when still focused on just the one issue of work happening onsite in office buildings: “Depending on whether a company is a cross-state or multi-state employer there’s a patchwork of regulations and potential hurdles it has to deal with.”
This article was clearly not intended to be an in-depth examination of the myriad of COVID-related regulatory actions. From my perspective, the increase in compliance risk is really the message here. It has been, frankly, amazing how well companies have done at managing all the mandates related to COVID. All those regulatory actions were on top of the usual volume of material that comes from the regulators.
There is no doubt in my mind that there was already increased compliance risk before COVID. Adding all those local, state and federal COVID-specific mandates on top of the normal load creates additional risk of missing something or making a mistake. Compliance professionals work so hard on projects that are very under-appreciated, yet the failure to do so can bring major adverse consequences. The Business Insurance piece did not make a connection to the time of year, but to me this was a piece that has everything to do with gratitude. As Thanksgiving approaches this year, many companies should be very thankful for the compliance staff who work so hard, COVID or no COVID, to make sure that this complex and highly regulated business of insurance is done right.