Day 1 | What 2020 Brought To Compliance Programs - a podcast by Thomas Fox

2020 was a very significant year for every compliance practitioner and compliance program. Not only was it the year with the single highest anti-bribery fine ever and highest annual amount of FCPA penalties. There were several significant enforcement actions, involving corporations coupled with a large number of individual prosecutions. Yet, perhaps most significantly, there were two noteworthy releases of information by the federal government which directly impacted compliance professionals.
In June, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released its 2020 Update to the Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs - Guidance Document (2020 Evaluation) was released. It should be mandatory reading for every Chief Compliance Officer (CCO), compliance practitioner and professional or any other person interested in the latest thinking of the DOJ on what constitutes a best practices compliance program.
The second release was the DOJ and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released the updated A RESOURCE GUIDE TO THE U.S. FOREIGN CORRUPT PRACTICES ACT SECOND EDITION (2020 FCPA Resource Guide). This was a most welcomed update to the seminal and original FCPA Resource Guide, released in 2012 and widely recognized as the single best volume on the FCPA. Some of the key changes for the compliance professional include the following. 
The first change to note is the expanded definition to the questions “Is it [a corporate compliance program] being applied in good faith” with the addition of the queries, “In other words, is the program adequately resourced and empowered to function effectively?” This language comes from the 2020 Update. This change clearly reflects the need for a company to do far more than have a paper compliance program in place which presaged many of the changes brought forward in the 2020 Update.
However, the biggest change is the addition of a new Hallmark, entitled “Investigation, Analysis, and Remediation of Misconduct.  There are many interesting aspects to this new Hallmark, not the least that it begins with “The truest measure of an effective compliance program is how it responds to misconduct.” 
The 2020 Resource Guide is a most welcomed document from the DOJ and SEC. It brings forward the top FCPA and compliance resource from the past decade into this decade. The 2020 Update continues the DOJ communication to the compliance community about its expectations for a best practices compliance program. 
?Three Key Takeaways

The 2020 Update brings business intelligence to compliance.

The key theme is continuous monitoring and continuous improvement.

The 2020 FCPA Resource Guide emphasized the importance of root cause analysis.

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