How to become a Compliance Manager

How To Become a Compliance Manager

Compliance managers provide the structure, training and education, rules and regulations and actionable leadership that guarantees businesses are working within the statutes of the law. It is a high-demand job staffed by incredibly diligent, tireless, intelligent legal and financial minds. It is a challenging career path to walk, but its reward – successful placement within a highly respected and well-paid profession – is highly prized.

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

Becoming a compliance manager is no easy feat, but the role provides immense variety, depending on the sector you decide to practice. Compliance managers are required in almost every industry where financial prudence is required and regulated, which means professionals wanting to explore a career as a compliance manager can end up working in anything from financial services to the charity sector and everything in between.

Before focusing on one particular industry, prospective compliance managers must be educated to a degree level and have a solid understanding of finance or law to make the first step into this particular arm of business regulation.

Compliance managers must be communicative, natural leaders, diligent, and obsessed with detail. And, seeing as the pressure on compliance managers and internal controls is incredibly high, the role requires a certain level of even-mindedness and maturity, not to mention the ability to deal with stressful situations and the particulars of a shifting legal landscape.

After all, the future success of any company that requires compliance managers will rely entirely on their compliance team’s control and understanding of the law, the market, and how to impact regulatory change when needed.

Please visit our job description page to learn more about a Compliance Manager’s day-to-day responsibilities.

Step 1 – Understand the Power of Risk When Thinking About Career Development

The central skills component of a compliance manager is an understanding of risk, risk mitigation, and trends within corporate and financial risk management.

Risk management and how risk affects the successful implementation of regulatory controls will be your primary determinant of how successful you are at becoming a compliance manager. The hiring body tasked with assessing you will want to review your skills base, working knowledge, and experience of risk within your sector and how you use that knowledge base to build a culture of compliance within your previous jobs.

Step 2 – Certifications

As we mention in depth in our Compliance Manager Qualifications and Skills page, a string of certifications will help angle your compliance career into specific fields, such as information systems security, ethics, governance, and IT.

These extra boosts to your compliance manager application will help establish you as a high-demand candidate and a leader in your field.

Step 3 – Watch Out for Legal Changes

Changes in financial legislation occur often and are strictly enforced; a compliance team, managed by a rigorous compliance manager, is responsible for making the required adjustments to regulatory advice and oversight. This creates the basis of a culture of compliance, which is essential for financial business success and service provision within the limits of the law.

Learn more about Compliance Manager careers here.

The following articles cover the job description, salaries, CV-building tips and more:

Job Description & Profile, Salary & Pay, Qualifications, Skills & Requirements 

Search Jobs to find out about the Compliance Manager job roles we currently have available.