COMPLIANCE: from regulatory publishing to risk management solutions

Introduction

Regulatory publishing used to mean rulebooks of Government-derived regulations published in loose-leaf format, with added-value commentaries provided by skilled editorial staff in the legal, tax and regulatory (LTR) publishing houses that grew to dominate this market.

Over the years these services have expanded - news alerts and newsletters are now delivered online, and some regulatory publishers provide outsourced helpline and consultancy services where they underpin the risks to their clients of potentially failing to comply with regulations.

The purpose of this report is to survey trends and developments in the area of regulatory publishing as they relate to the growing discipline of compliance risk management. The report starts by looking at the traditional regulatory publishing framework, and progresses to the growing focus on compliance risk management.

Official regulatory services

As the regulatory environment has grown more complex, political pressures to relieve some of the burdens, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), have grown. Governments are under some pressure to enhance their services to the citizen, to simplify, to communicate more effectively and to reduce their own costs of regulation. Governments have responded to this in two ways; by launching ?better regulation? initiatives, and by providing their own regulation services.

While publishers are often cynical about the efforts of regulators to provide good regulation services, this report argues that the drive toward better regulation and the advances in publishing technologies are resulting in vastly improved government services. This in turn provides further incentive for regulatory publishers to move up the value chain.

Case studies in this section of the report include:

• Net Regs;

• Financial Services Authority Handbook;

• Business Link;

• Occupational Health and Safety Association;

• National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD).

Traditional regulatory services

Publishers and other service providers have always distinguished themselves by the value they add. For several years, the best of them have been providing steadily enhanced regulatory services. In this section we look at the natural evolution of regulatory publishing from looseleaf rulebooks to a wider variety of services. As well as traditional publishers, we look at some examples of outsourced client solutions.

Case studies in this section of the report include:

• JJ Keller and Associates;

• GEE;

• Croner;

• National Britannia.

Compliance Risk Management Services

Managing the risks for customers in an increasingly regulated environment has resulted in the development of a much more complex series of services. This section of the report looks at some of the crucial components of developing compliance solutions.

The first of these is the need to control process and documentation within a business - hence our focus on electronic document and record management (EDRMS) solutions to compliance issues.

Related to this are the crucially important developments around ?rules engines? which seek to automate, insofar as is possible, the processes within compliance relating to regulations and rulesets.

?Governance? too is becoming a totemic word in the compliance field (or ?ethics?), hence the rise of the term Governance and Risk Compliance Management (GRCM). This reflects the need for companies to encourage best practice and learning. As a natural outcrop of this, there is a strong focus on the development of e-learning tools.

Case studies in this section of the report include:

• Logical Apps;

• Ruleburst;

• Compliance 360;

• Compliance University;

• Liquent Regulatory Solutions;

• Complinet.

Conclusions

Regulatory publishers have become more sophisticated in their approach to providing complia