Companies are improving and professionalizing their compliance activities
German businesses have steadily expanded their compliance structures and internal training programmes compared with previous years and have never been in a better position than they are now. However, declining support for compliance issues among management is giving compliance officers cause for concern. Those are the key findings of the representative cross-sector survey for the CMS Compliance Barometer, conducted in 2017 for the third time by commercial law firm CMS Germany. The CMS Compliance Index produced a reading of 67.1 this year, out of a possible 100 points, representing a stabilisation compared with previous years. The Index measures the extent to which compliance is embedded in major companies.
Even though the latest Compliance Index shows that companies consider themselves well resourced in relation to compliance, recent compliance scandals have apparently failed to make management sufficiently aware of the significance of these issues. This is a worrying situation, especially since a lack of commitment on the part of management may result in compliance and liability risks, both for the company and for the management team.
For the survey, leading market research institute Ipsos conducted anonymous interviews with a sample of compliance officers from 200 large companies with at least 500 employees. Please let us know if you would like us to provide you with a copy of the study or contact one of the authors: Dr. Harald W. Potinecke, Dr. Tobias Teicke or Florian Block.
