Compliance in Covid’s time

December 17, 2020

Mélanie Diaz

Without a doubt, the experience of a pandemic such as the coronavirus has disrupted our society at all levels, testing us all, generating as many crises as opportunities; although it is proving difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel, we must not lose sight of the opportunities that this unexpected situation also offers us.

The „new normality” we are currently experiencing has highlighted the urgent need to clearly identify the Compliance risks to which an organization may be exposed and the appropriate management of these risks, even for scenarios as unpredictable as a pandemic, to which it is very important to consider specific contingency plans.

Ethical culture

Companies must understand the need to establish an internal culture of Compliance and a commitment to ethics that permeates their actions, thus making of good practices the norm within the company and in its relations with third parties. If this is still a pending task, it is a good time to review internally the implementation of these issues in the organization.

Any new business movement, a sale, an absorption, a merger or a spin-off, and any business transformation, will be clouded by the lack of a good documentary, procedural, fiscal or ethical order, with the corresponding protocols to support them, since it should not be forgotten that article 130.2 of the Spanish Criminal Code establishes that criminal liability is transmitted and not extinguished, as happens with the death of individuals. A similar situation is to be found in other countries.

Market requirements

It is important to have 'the house in order’ and, increasingly, a good Compliance incorporated, if we want to sell to certain customers who, more and more, incorporate ethical rules that prevent buying from companies that do not have incorporated such instruments of internal control and traceability, to ensure a good regulatory and ethical.

It is an indisputable fact that, if we want to be accepted as provider of companies of a certain size, we have to implement these procedures, so that, if a company aspires to wider and higher horizons, one day or another it is going to face this inconvenience.

Anticipating this in advance will facilitate this moment and access to better business partners will be much easier. We should not leave it 'for later’. We are seeing with this pandemic how difficult it is for us to foresee, our tendency to 'nothing will happen’; and the consequences of this are being experienced these days. Let us try, in our business, to be one step ahead of the events.