Originally, Compliance, also called “ compliance ” in English, had a purely financial scope.

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Yvonne Moudingo Sanama, Cognon Lindsay and Fortuné Chagas, students of the MBA Compliance and Risk Management at ESLSCA Business School Paris, bring their expertise on the subject of Compliance.



In a context of fantuan database interconnected economies and legal policies, all companies are now concerned and impacted by new obligations. The last decade has seen a massive increase in the Compliance requirements imposed on companies.



"No one is supposed to be ignorant of compliance": this statement seems legitimate as it has occupied a predominant place in companies for the last decade. In reality, this adage reveals a legal fiction that is obvious, that is to say, just like the law, one cannot escape a lack of information to justify the fact of non-compliance with the principles of Compliance .



The question we are asking today is to understand the reasons which have led to such a boom in the “ Compliance ” function and which have given it this inescapable character.



What is compliance?




Compliance initially originated from banking and financial regulations . It could be defined as the set of actions aimed at integrating requirements from external standards into banking structures (organizations, processes, and procedures) .



These are the directives and regulations issued in the form of requirements by the supervisory authorities. Indeed, the risk of non-compliance was specified by the work of Basel II in 2004 and subsequently refined by European directives. The AMF "Autorité des Marchés Financiers" and the ACPR "Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolutions" ensure compliance with these provisions and sanction any breaches.



The idea of ​​Compliance was therefore to highlight the failures of companies in the form of risk, legal, administrative or disciplinary sanctions, but also financial loss, damage to reputation, resulting from the lack of compliance with legal and regulatory provisions.



Little by little, in parallel with the development of Corporate Social Responsibility and "Quality" standards, Compliance practices of legal or voluntary origin have spread to all levels of the company.