Ten Years of Futility?

[Reading time: 2 minutes]

Monday February 4, 2002, exactly 10 years ago today, was my first day of work as Compliance Officer for Remesas Quisqueyana, Inc., a money transfer company then headquartered in New York City.  Like many other non-bank financial institutions in the United States, Quisqueyana had recently -on January 1 of 2002, to be precise- become governed by a new set of regulations enacted after the tragic attacks of September 11, 2001.

After ten years in the trenches, a reasonable amount of experience under my belt, in my opinion, I feel qualified enough to start this blog in which I intend to recount everything I have experienced within and without the trenches, opine about the acts and omissions of industry stakeholders, and offer to anyone willing to receive it advice on strategy, tactics, tools, techniques, methodologies and secrets for success in the compliance and risk management domain.

I intend to be provocative, controversial and even irreverent, simply because that is my style. And that is my style because I like change, evolution, and I like to see it during my lifetime.  I intend to be as honest as I can be, even brutally so.  I may ruffle some feathers from time to time (or none if nobody reads this), but I assure you that one thing I will exhibit at all times is a desire to effect change for the better of our companies, our economy, our profession and our personal lives.

I’d like to start by asking rhetorically “what have we really accomplished in the past ten years?”  As much as I’d like to hear other people’s opinions first, I must submit I believe that little of what those laws and regulations intended has been accomplished, other than creating increased bureaucracy, economic inefficiencies and inequalities, and, like all laws do, several cottage industries with “experts” of doubtful effectiveness and repute.

Enough for today.  I need to post this before midnight, lest I might not comply with my self-imposed goal of launching this blog exactly on the day of the tenth anniversary of my first day of employment as Compliance Officer.