Compliance never sleeps however it may slow down while we take a well-deserved break.
How do you kick-start compliance to ensure that compliance is protecting what matters – your business, people, customers, business partners and other key stakeholders?
There’s a few simple steps that you should take.
- Incidents are a critical source of information including as an early-warning system for potential breaches, its important that staff, authorised representatives and material service providers are reminded of their obligations to raise and report incidents. This could be as simple as an email with a FAQ, checklist, link to the incident management system etc and through leader-led team meetings
- complaints go hand-in-hand with incidents as a critical source of information and business continual improvement in addition to meeting obligations under RG 271 and Code. A quick refresher to staff and representatives in combination with incidents is all that is needed to get complaints back to front-of-mind.
- Storm season, most teams are returning to full resourcing during the middle of storm season in Australia therefore transitioning back to sense of heightened alert is critical. A reminder of event plans at a team morning tea is a great refresher to shift minds from holiday mode to event readiness mode. This includes IDR teams and service providers.
- Regulatory change projects – it’s likely that CPS 230, Privacy Act amendments and other regualtory changes were paused over the break. It’s time to reignite the projects and enthuse the teams. A workshop to recap the purpose, the plan & timeframe, the successes achieved to date and what lies ahead, is an awesome way to get the wheels of the project team spinning again and moving the project ahead with a sense of urgency.
- Monitoring, of internal teams, authorised representatives, material service providers and any other person providing insurance services or products on your behalf is essential to ensure that onbligations are being met and that compliance measures are operating effectively to protect the business & customers. January is a great time to revisit your Monitoring program and pause to reflect on its effectiveness in meeting AFSL, Code and upcoming CPS 230 requirements. Don’t have a Monitoring Program? January is also a great time to develop and implement a tailored monitoing program (contact me for assistance)
- ASIC IDR data reporting, its time to submit an IDR report to ASIC for the reporting period 1 July to 31 December. A two-month submission window is now open and closes end of February. Failure to report IDR data is a reportable situation to ASIC. Contact me for assistance or read more about your IDR data reporting obligations here
- Training, if you are half-way through your financial year or at the end of your calendar year it’s nevertheless a good time to review how your staff are progressing with their training. It’s mandatory for AFS Licensees to maintain a training register so it should be a relatively easy exercise to see who is lagging and needs a gentle requirement about the importance of continuing professional development. January is also a good time to think about refresher training for responsible managers, or staff training on AFS laws read about the compliance training services I offer here. Specifically designed and tailored to your business
- Compliance review January is a great time to arrange an independent compliance review of your business from a top down perspective. A compliance review ensures that you are set up to adequately manage the compliance complexities that general insurance presents and close out any identified gaps in a prioritised manner, read more about the Compliance reviews that I provided here
- Compliance workshop need a compliance refresher? Think about registering for my Compliance workshop in Brisbane, 20th March. The workshop has been completely revised and refreshed focusing on the challenges and issues for General Insurance in 2025 details about the Brisbane workshop and how to register here
As your teams return to work its important that you kick-start compliance. Compliance measures, incident & complaint reporting, and monitoring are critical to ensure that Compliance serves to protect your business, people, customers, business partners and other key stakeholders.
January is a great time to pause and check that everything is working as intended and protecting what matters.