ACA Compliance Releases Top Risk, Compliance Challenges for 2020

The current heightened risk climate has not erased the risk financial firms have been dealing with in the last few years. A new paper from ACA Compliance notes that the industry has “seen the rise of new types of financial advisers like robo-advisers, new asset classes like cryptocurrencies, and the increased investment in alternative investments and emerging markets.” Technology also is impacting how firms run their business, and regulators are ever vigilant in their scrutiny of asset managers. ACA writes that its top 10 risk and compliance challenges for the new decade underscore both the complexity of the challenges that risk and compliance teams are facing, as well as the need to evolve the compliance function to adopt a fresh approach. Among financial firms top concerns are: Regulatory change (47% of firms); cybersecurity and data breach concerns (19%); data privacy regulations (17%); emerging technologies (artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing) (10%); digital transformation (4%) and big data/data governance (3%).