Burgeoning regulation is creating opportunities for those seeking a career in compliance. In an interview, Fernando Lozano Vazquez Compliance Operations (Officer) at the EIB and Laura Bail, Compliance Officer at Natixis Life, explore the many disciplines in which a young recruit can specialize as well as the challenges new recruits face.
What are the prospects for a young compliance officer?
“With the constant flow of regulatory developments, compliance is a dynamic field for any proactive, young professional,” says Fernando Lozano. “They can start by gaining a ‘helicopter view’ of a business and then embrace numerous topics in the discipline. These offer exciting development opportunities for a young compliance officer to learn and discover,” responds Laura Bail. “Recruits have the opportunity to play a key role in the company, even at an early age.” She adds that “Future career developments can be either in management positions, or the opportunity to become an expert in one of the many compliance topics, or even switching to other related positions such as permanent controls, audit, legal, etc.” The prospects for development are especially high in Luxembourg,” Ms. Bail concludes.”
“It can be very rewarding to quickly be trusted and relied upon by colleagues from all departments”
What can give a young compliance officer a sense of achievement?
“Compliance topics are highly strategic. That means a young professional may quickly have to assume important and highly strategic responsibilities. It can be very rewarding to quickly be trusted and relied upon by colleagues from all departments,” declares Ms. Bail. “One can be proud of the contribution one can make at an early stage. An early role allowed me to work side by side with the frontline officers to ensure that our projects lived up to the highest standards of integrity. Compliance can, for example, play a key role in making needed investments possible,” says Mr. Lozano.
What challenges do young compliance officers face?
“I believe my learning and my career path were accelerated because I was always trusted by my managers and never treated differently to experienced colleagues,” says Ms. Bail. She adds, “I don’t see differences between difficulties faced by young or more experienced compliance officers. They share the challenges of establishing good relationships with the LOD1, the workload, responsibilities, etc.,” However, Mr. Lozano believes that young recruits face some uncertainties: “Young employees can feel overwhelmed by the broadness of the compliance field and the many sub-disciplines that make it up. Because of the breadth of opportunities with which young recruits to compliance are faced, they will have questions about what area should they specialize in; what is the best training in which they should invest time and resources, and how they can keep up with the breath-taking pace of regulatory developments, he concludes.”