The chief compliance officer (CCO) of a company is the officer primarily responsible for overseeing and managing compliance issues within an organization. The CCO typically reports to the Chief Executive Officer or Chief Operations Officer.
The role has long existed at companies that operate in heavily regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare. For other companies, the rash of 2000s accounting scandals, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the recommendations of the U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines have led to additional CCO appointments.
Scott Cohen, editor and publisher of Compliance Week, dates the proliferation of CCOs to a 2002 speech by SEC commissioner Cynthia Glassman, in which she called on companies to designate a "corporate responsibility officer." The responsibilities of the position often include leading enterprise compliance efforts, designing and implementing internal controls, policies and procedures to assure compliance with applicable local, state and federal laws and regulations and third party guidelines; managing audits and investigations into regulatory and compliance issues; and responding to requests for information from regulatory bodies.
Famous quotes containing the words chief, compliance and/or officer:
“The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the naïve self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest.... Statesmanship ... consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“This is the day when people reciprocally offer, and receive, the kindest and the warmest wishes, though, in general, without meaning them on one side, or believing them on the other. They are formed by the head, in compliance with custom, though disavowed by the heart, in consequence of nature.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“There was something so free and self-contained about him, something in the young fellow’s movements, that made that officer aware of him. And this irritated the Prussian. He did not choose to be touched into life by his servant.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)