‘Compliance Culture Vital for Discipline in Financial System’

The President of the Compliance Institute Nigeria (CIN), Pattison Boleigha, has stressed the need to promote an effective culture of compliance in order to drive discipline in the financial service system.

Boleigha, said this recently, in Lagos, at the 2019 induction/investiture ceremony of the institute with the theme: ‘Developing Compliance Skills for The Financial Industry: A Panacea for A Sustainable Financial System.’

In his remarks, the Director, Capacity Development, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Hajiya Aisha Abubakar, said with the growth and sophistication of the financial system, there was need to evolve a safe and sound financial system, “hence the need to step up our compliance skills in order to meet with the dictates of the time.”

Abubakar, who was represented at the event by the Deputy Director, Central Bank Learning Centre, Mrs. Anetekhai Affi, said political will, management will and entrenchment of good governance, were factors that would assist the country step up more on its compliance level.

She said to be a good compliance officer, capacity building was paramount for financial system stability.

Abubakar, noted that compliance could be broadly described as an essential and critical process aimed at mitigating the risk of impairment to the business model caused by failure to meet requisite laws.

According to Boleigha,

“The political and economic environment in Nigeria and globally have recently gone through tremendous changes with a fast pace in changes in regulation in all sectors. To meet this fast pace changes, the need for culture to be driven by compliance professionals becomes very expedient.

“Therefore, the need to continually improve the syllabus and curriculum to include more contemporary compliance topics such as better coverage of other regulatory areas such as pension commission, Corporate

Affairs Commission (CAC), financial reporting council and other self-regulating bodies such as the ACCOBIN and the association of Bureau De Change Operators of Nigeria, ABCON and others.”

A total of 282 members successfully qualified for the award of the institute’s compliance professional qualification examinations conducted in 2019.

Also, 262 members took and passed the Designate Compliance Professional (DCP) examinations.