La Funzione compliance nelle banche italiane

The Basel Committee document, “Compliance and compliance function in banks”, published in April 2005, introduces an independent function in bank organisation, for the identification, evaluation and monitoring of compliance risk; that is the risk of incurring economic and reputational damage, deriving from non-conformity to laws, regulations of behaviour codes. With this document the Committee has provided indications for the constitution of a compliance unit in all banks, with which the national supervisory authorities have fallen (or are falling) in line with the adoption of new supervisory instructions, which will determine significant changes, regarding the evolution of the functions carried out by the bodies set in charge of internal control. Compliance activity was introduced for the first time in Italy with the consultation document of the Bank of Italy of August 2006, which represents an initial document taking into account the orientation of the Basel Committee. This work is directed toward the analysis of the evolution of the internal structure of the banks operating in Italy, following the introduction of the function of compliance risk management. We attempt to obtain an evaluation of the organisational and operational structure adopted and the evaluation of the principal costs, from a qualitative point of view, that this structure involves. In the second part, the work is directed towards the identification of the roles and responsibilities of the main functions involved in the internal controls process, in order to determine any overlapping areas and to avoid any processes of reciprocal lack of assumption of responsibility. For the collection of data the study uses the findings gathered through two questionnaires, administered in the period from April to June 2006 and from March to May 2007, to a sampling respectively of 60 and 31 financial intermediaries, prevalently banks. The study reveals how, in absence of a definitive regulation from the Bank of Italy, the organisational and operational structure adopted by Italian banks are different according as the dimension of intermediaries and their affiliation to a foreign group of intermediaries. With regard to the attribution of the roles and responsibilities between the compliance function and the other function of the system of internal controls, there is an high risk of overlapping activities and inefficient processes. A possible solution of this problem is the formalisation of a mandate, from which the roles and responsibilities of each company body can be clearly deduced, and the arrangement of adequate information flows among the various operational and control units.